Are you Identity Aware?

Add support for Information Cards to your site and win a trip to Redmond and dinner with Kim Cameron!

Identifying yourself online is becoming increasingly difficult and dangerous. Most people who use the web have to maintain several usernames and passwords and have to remember which usernames and passwords to use at the various sites they use. Whilst usernames and passwords are a growing frustration to most users, this problem is dwarfed by the growing threat of phishing and other forms of malware and identity-related attack. Follow the wrong link and try to sign-in to a malicious site masquerading as, for example, your bank, and you run the very real risk of suffering considerable loss. These potential losses may be financial but may also impact your reputation (e.g. credit score) that may take years to repair.

Microsoft, along with many partners in the IT Industry, is building a suite of technologies to help combat the phishing issue, whilst making it easier for users to authenticate safely online. Technologies such as Windows CardSpace enable users to identify themselves by presenting cryptographically strong identity tokens (represented visually as information cards) to supporting websites.

To help fuel the growth of sites supporting Information Cards, Microsoft is announcing a competition that is open to every website owner, regardless of your web platform of choice. We hope you'll join us in helping to protect your user's identities from abuse and make it easier for your users to sign-in to your sites!

How to enter

• Add sign-up and sign-in support for Information Cards and Windows CardSpace to your website
• Email the following to identity@microsoft.com
  • Details of your site
  • Complete this statement: "We added support for information cards to our site because …"
• All entries will be judged by the CardSpace product team and winners announced on August 17, 2007. The winner will be notified by email.

Note: We will only use your email address to notify you if you win.

The prizes

• Grand Prize:
  • 1 Round-trip ticket (from and to a single location within the United States)
  • Overnight accommodation in a hotel near Microsoft Campus
  • Meet the team - spend a day with various members of Microsoft's Federated Identity team
  • Dinner with Kim Cameron
• Second prize:
  • XBox 360 Elite Games Console
• Third prize:
• Zune music player

Please note that due to international gaming laws we are only able to offer these prizes to US Residents and that any taxes incurred from receiving a prize is the sole responsibility of the prize winner(s).

Adding support for Windows CardSpace to your site

• The following resources will be indispensible in guiding you how to add support to your website:
  • Information Card Kit for ASP.NET
    • If your site is not running ASP.NET, the Information Card Kit for Websites provides useful DHTML & JavaScript scripts
  • Information Card Deployment Guide
  • Windows CardSpace Simple Demo Walkthrough screencast
  • Configuring IIS7 to support Windows CardSpace sites screencast
• If you have technical issues, please post questions to the Windows CardSpace discussion forum on MSDN – we'll be monitoring this forum closely and responding as quickly as we can. Note – if you contact us directly with support requests and your request is generic in nature, we'll ask you to post your question to the forum. This is the help others who may be experiencing the same issue as you and so that we can better manage potential support issues.