Microsoft, Google and PayPal, a unit of eBay, are among the founders of an industry organization that is hoping to solve the problem of password overload among computer users.
The Information Card Foundation is an effort to create a single industrywide approach to managing personal identities online that promises to reduce drastically the use of passwords and create a system that is less vulnerable to fraud.
"There is such a market requirement to solve this problem," said Paul Trevithick, chairman of the new group and chief executive of Parity, an identity-protection technology company in Needham, Massachusetts, that is developing what it calls an i-card. The foundation, which also includes Equifax, Novell, Oracle and nine industry analysts and technology leaders, will try to set shared standards.
The idea is to bring the concept of an identity card, like a driver's license, to the online world. Rather than logging on to sites with user IDs and passwords, people would gain access to sites using a secure digital identity that was overseen by a third party.
In addition to simplifying online shopping, such information cards would reduce the number of phishing incidents -- that is, the fraudulent use of someone's identity to gain access to financial records, according to Robert Blakeley, a research director at the Burton Group, a consulting firm that is participating in the effort. "You don't have to depend on a password, so there's no phishing opportunity," he said.
One of the biggest tasks facing the group is getting the millions of Web sites to support the system, a process analysts estimate would take a few years.
"The technology is available today, but what is not available today is a lot of sites that will accept information cards," Blakeley said. "The mission of the group is to assure everybody that the industry is working...

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