In the end who you are has little to do with how reliable and forthright you are, it’s all about reputation; more over given the disconnected nature of the internet which is even complicated further by the use of transaction intermediaries like ebay and craigslist what identity information that is available is abstracted out of the transaction.
Even if that was not the case the lack of a business model that supports subscribers acquiring a “strong credentials” makes having a real identity available to make a decision a luxury one cannot bet on.
People often confuse identity with reputation but they are clearly two different things; SSL/TLS is a great example I remember once talking to Paul Kocher about SSL/TLS he said that it was a technology designed to be a “consumer confidence builder”; clearly this is the case after all who would want to submit their personal data over the internet without knowing where it was going and having some faith that no one is watching it in flight?
Turns out most everyone would do that, no I am serious when was the last time you were at a store and you handed your credit card to a clerk without asking them their name? How about discussing your mailing address or phone number with a clerk without going into a private room?
This happens all the time, and although on-line identity theft is rising most identity theft is the basis of attacks rooted in the physical world.
My friend Cem and I have talked about leaving Microsoft a number of times to build out a reputation aggregation service, something that helps assign a number much like the number credit card companies and banks use to determine our risk when they loan us money; one of the things that has held us back is timing, for a system like this to work Web 2.0 must be in full swing, identity systems in use by the sites one derives reputation from must have some federation aspect to them, and then there is this little problem my old boss always talks about he calls it a “sustainable business model” (bah!).
In any event there is a interesting article on this topic over at information week, check it out.