Intel ditches identity stamp technology

Intel has dropped its controversial user identification technology from its forthcoming 1.5Ghz Willamette chip.

Absent from Willamette's design is a unique identification number, support for hardware digital certificates and other security measures that could be used to limit piracy by tracking users.

The decision follows the furore in January 1999 when Intel said it would stamp a serial number on to each Pentium III chip, but then disabled the feature after privacy activists launched a boycott campaign.

An Intel spokesman said: "We now feel that there are new and emerging technologies that would be better provide an architecture for trusted ecommerce."

Instead of the identification technology, Intel is backing the Trusted Computing Platform Alliance, a working group of major hardware and software vendors. The alliance is working towards delivering a specification for a trusted computing platform later this year.

Neil McEvoy, director of ecommerce consultant Consult Hyperion, said the controversy surrounding the identification technology was "more of a cock-up than a conspiracy" by Intel against online privacy.

"Intel has taken a hell of a lot of flak over the ID scheme and the bad press was not worth any technical benefit," he said, adding that smartcard and hardware based encryption technology is seen as more attractive for business-to-consumer ecommerce.

"A person's online ID belongs at the application level and users were not comfortable with having a mechanism for this way down in the plumbing of their machines," he said.

Commercial considerations may also have played a large part in the move. According to reports, the Chinese government was so concerned by the identification number that it warned against using computers with Pentium III chips.