FIDIS
Future of Identity in the Information Society (No. 507512)
D2.3
[Final], Version: 2.0
File: fidis-wp2-del2.3.models.doc
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that is mainly text-based. VCards are supported by and used in various applications and
contexts, such as Web browsers, email clients and Personal Information Managers.
A vCard may contain the following types of information:
•
Personal information, such as identification information (the name, nickname, and
birthday of a person), addressing information (a person’s home, business and email
addresses, various telephone numbers), and organisational information (the
organisation a person is associated with, his title and role within the organisation).
•
Additional geographic information which may be useful when contacting the
respective person, such as the time zone or geographical co-ordinates of the address
where the person can usually be reached. This is usually static and does not indicate a
person’s current location.
•
Additional multimedia information, such as a photography of the person or a sound
file containing the correct pronunciation of the person’s name.
Table 1 shows an example of a vCard containing only text-based elements.
BEGIN:VCARD
The version of the VCard specification.
VERSION:2.1
The name of the person (family name; given
name; additional names; pre- and suffixes).
Required entry.
N:Cissée;Richard
The formatted name. Required entry.
FN:Richard Cissée
The organisational name and units associated
with the person.
ORG:DAI-Labor, TU Berlin
The person’s position or job title.
TITLE:Research Assistant
Various telephone numbers (possible types
include voice, fax, mobile, business, home).
TEL;WORK;VOICE:030 /31473612
TEL;WORK;FAX:030 /31421799
Address information (again, different types of
addresses are possible here).
ADR;WORK;ENCODING=QUOTED-PRINTABLE:;;Technische
Universit=E4t Berlin / DAI-Labor=0D=0ASekretariat
GOR1-1=0D=0AF=ranklinstrasse
28/29;Berlin;;10587;Deutschland
The URL associated with the person.
URL;WORK:http://www.dai-labor.de
The person’s email addresses.
EMAIL;PREF;INTERNET:richard.cissee@dai-labor.de
The revision of the information contained in the
vCard (a timestamp indicating the last
modification).
REV:20050411T125131Z
END:VCARD
Tableau 1: An Exemplary VCard
6.1.3 Universal private address with XRI and I-Names
I-names are universal private addresses intended to provide persistent addressing. An I-name
integrates a person’s different electronic addresses, such as email, instant messaging,
FIDIS
Future of Identity in the Information Society (No. 507512)
D2.3
[Final], Version: 2.0
File: fidis-wp2-del2.3.models.doc
Page 50
SMS/MMS etc. An I-name assigned to a person is, similarly to a domain name, supposed to
be relatively long-lived and does not change even when the person’s contact data changes.
Additionally, it protects the person from undesired communication attempts, such as spam, by
operating on a permission-based communication infrastructure.
I-names are based on the XRI (Extensible Resource Identifier) and XDI (XRI Data
Interchange) specifications under development from OASIS. XRIs are a kind of Uniform
Resource Identifier (URI) providing a standard syntax and resolution protocol for abstract
identifiers, i.e. identifiers that are independent of a specific location, domain, application, or
protocol. I-names are human-friendly identifiers (for a person, they may simply have the form
“=GivenName.FamilyName”) that are usually combined with I-numbers, i.e. persistent
machine-friendly identifiers assigned to resources (persons in this case).
An I-name may be used to contact the respective person via a specific channel, such as email,
only if the person has given permission to do so. Otherwise, the I-name may only be used to
request this permission. These requests can automatically be filtered by an I-broker using a
personal contact page via which the person may specify rules for contacting.
6.1.3.1
References
I-Names Explained
http://www.xdi.org/i-names-explained.html
6.1.4 The Public-Key Cryptography Standards #9 (PKCS #9)
In the domain of authentication, PKCS defines some specification providing some definition
of the person.
The naturalPerson object class is a general-purpose auxiliary object class that is intended to
hold attributes about human beings. It has been designed to be used within directory services
based on the LDAP protocol and the X.500 family of protocols, where support for these
attributes is considered useful.
NaturalPerson
•
emailAddress
•
unstructuredName
•
unstructuredAddress
•
dateOfBirth
•
placeOfBirth
•
gender
•
countryOfCitizenship
•
countryOfResidence
•
pseudonym
•
serialNumber
•
... -- For future extensions
References