CompuServe says Virtual Passport is an important, secure client/server technology for extending CompuServe's proprietary content into the open standards of Internet content and technology. When implemented, Virtual Passport's other benefits include the ability for World Wide Web sites to verify visitors to its site, an opportunity to bring an additional base of some five million users to a Web site, a secure means for transmitting protected information such as passwords and personal data and a means to set-up a secure Web site which recognizes only specific holders of a Virtual Passport.

The latter feature means a small business can have its own intranet. Using, what it calls, remote passphrase authentication (RPA), CompuServe says different levels of security allow a Web site administrator to determine what each Virtual Passport user can access.

Jeff Shafer, CompuServe spokesperson, told Newsbytes, "Virtual Passport is a major step in our strategy to aggregate specific Internet content. We plan to offer our users the best and easiest access to the content they want. By using Virtual Passport, our users will not be nickel-and-dimed to death with additional Internet fees."

As part of the Virtual Passport program, we are forming relationships with critical Web content providers like Pathfinder. "We pay a fee which I cannot disclose. It allows our members to access Pathfinders fee-based content without charges just by using our Virtual Passport," added Shafer. The company is currently looking into similar arrangements with other content providers which seem to offer the content CompuServe members are demanding.

Shafer also said the new technology which is currently in development and expected later this summer means members of the online giant's service can travel through the Internet without having to memorize a collection of different user names and passwords. Virtual Passport will be integrated into the next version of CompuServe Information Service's WinCim software version 3.0.

Shafer closed his remarks, saying, "No-one knows what kind of identification and authorization technology will be here in a year, but RPA is here now and we encourage people to use it by making it freely available. Down the road, RPA could become the standard for creating an Internet ID and possibly a means of payment for services and goods"

(Patrick McKenna/19960617/Press Contact: Jeff Shafer, CompuServe, 614-538-4632)