A service by the name of MyID.is has hit beta today with the aim to provide security to your online identity. It’s a pretty ambitious way for a company to claim your id on your behalf and verify all the blog posts, social networking profiles and other accounts set up in your name. It also happens to work as an OpenID.

It’s an excellent idea in theory with only three drawbacks to its success. First, to be really effective, everyone has to start using it, or at least enough people for it to be accepted and used across all major sites and applications.

There’s no reason that can’t happen but, although there are no exact competitors, there are the likes of PayPal who offer something similar in the financial realm and haven’t laid the best foundations with the best public feeling.

Second, is the issue of having to give up all your personal information and banking details to get your account set up in the first place. Now, I’m pretty happy with doing just about everything online but I can’t remember giving up the lot all on one page before. It might be tricky convincing people that it’s a good thing to do.

Lastly, what about the danger of this database being hacked? Well, at least here the company has done as much as they can by sending all the data off into a bank-like security system far, far away without even looking at it. Still not totally reassured by that but I appreciate the effort. I just don’t quite like the idea of having all my eggs in one basket and this vault might prove just too much of a tempting target to hordes and hordes of hackers – a big badge of honour and some serious rewards too.

Still, I do like the sound of what MyID.is does and perhaps once a few more people give it a try, I might pluck up the courage too.

(via TechCrunch)