Way back in January, IBM unveiled a new cryptographic tool called Identity Mixer, designed to protect your digital data from hackers. Today, the computing giant is opening the technology to developers for the first time through its cloud-based platform Bluemix. Before today, the service has only been available in “experimental phases,” says IBM, but now it’s fully available and accessible for any developer to use.
IBM says Identity Mixer is based on 10 years of research, with an anonymous credentials system at its core that serves as a security interface between you and third-party apps, and can authenticate users’ identities without the need to share specific details.
So any service, such as Spotify or Netflix, that asks for information like age, address, credit card details, or nationality, won’t receive all of the information requested. For example, if someone needs to prove that they are old enough to use Netflix, they can turn to Identity Mixer to verify that they are over 18, without giving Netflix their full date of birth.
