Prove who you are with Symantec's "Identity Client"

Palm Desert (CA) - There are plenty of tools to verify the legitimacy of online businesses, but there aren’t many for verifying customer identities. Now, Symantec has unveiled their "Norton Identity Client" which proves a customer’s identity to businesses. The client is actually a suite of utilities which include a site ranking tool along with spam resistant one-time email generators.

The client aims to shield the customer from spam and credit card fraud. The client can make alternative email addresses for specific for each of your favorite online shopping websites. Emails going to those addresses are then forwarded to the customer’s real email address. Spam should be reduced because the real address is never known or displayed on the merchant’s computers.

Enrique Salem, Symantec’s Group President of the Consumer Business Unit said, "Our goal is to create a universally accepted identity system across all web sites - from online financial institutions to retailers - for millions of consumers."

Another anti-fraud tool inside the suite will make one-time credit card numbers for purchases. The numbers could give customers more confidence in buying merchandise from new sites, sites that you don’t completely trust yet. Credit card companies have been offering one-time numbers and even pre-paid cards to prevent fraud.

Symantec’s client is still in development and the company expects a commercial product to be available in one to two years.