Admission and Verification of Identity in Electronic Records

Verification of identity is also a problem for consumers, who want to be assured that the persons with whom they do business are who they claim to be . As a result, companies engaged in electronic commerce are developing "digital certificates" or "digital IDs" that can be used to verify a person's identity over the Internet. "Digital certificates" are issued by a trusted intermediary who verifies the identity of a person and performs appropriate background checks, depending on the level of assurance to be granted. The simplest level verifies that an e-mail message was sent from an indicated address. The next level verifies the digital ID holder through online identity verification against a consumer database. The highest level requires that the holder personally appear before a notary public to have a digital ID application notarized. Once a person's identity has been verified, the certificate is created using public key encryption techniques, which makes it independently verifiable by the recipient and Immune from tampering it.