I actually heard this story while on the bus and listening to the news. It was about Ontario’s privacy commissioner (a province in Canada) who was throwing support behind Microsoft Vista because of one neat feature that will supposedly help keep your personal infromation safe while you shop online.

She stated that the insecurity of the Internet is not only preventing people from shopping online for fear of their personal information being stolen, but also killing smaller e-commerece businesses.

Microsoft Vista, which is due in January 2007, will finally be including infocards - a feature to protect your identity when you shop on the web. I did a little digging around the Internet and found that this idea is not new. In fact it was dreamt up by Microsoft back in 2004.

Infocards, let the bank act as the middle man between the buyer and seller. The bank will send the seller a payment confirmation, but doesn’t give any critical information (such as your credit card info).

I thought it was a pretty neat idea, and probably would make Internet shopping more secure than it is now. Many people do have doubts about shopping on the Net and are fearful of the jerks who are waiting to defraud people.

[via the TorontoStar, MicrosoftWatch]