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FIDIS 

Future of Identity in the Information Society (No. 507512)

 

D2.3 

  

[Final], Version: 2.0 

File: fidis-wp2-del2.3.models.doc 

Page 49 

 

that is mainly text-based. VCards are supported by and used in various applications and 

contexts, such as Web browsers, email clients and Personal Information Managers. 

A vCard may contain the following types of information: 

•

 

Personal information, such as identification information (the name, nickname, and 

birthday of a person), addressing information (a person’s home, business and email 

addresses, various telephone numbers), and organisational information (the 

organisation a person is associated with, his title and role within the organisation). 

•

 

Additional geographic information which may be useful when contacting the 

respective person, such as the time zone or geographical co-ordinates of the address 

where the person can usually be reached. This is usually static and does not indicate a 

person’s current location. 

•

 

Additional multimedia information, such as a photography of the person or a sound 

file containing the correct pronunciation of the person’s name. 

Table 1 shows an example of a vCard containing only text-based elements. 

 

BEGIN:VCARD 

The version of the VCard specification. 

VERSION:2.1 

The name of the person (family name; given 

name; additional names; pre- and suffixes). 

Required entry. 

N:Cissée;Richard 

The formatted name. Required entry. 

FN:Richard Cissée 

The organisational name and units associated 

with the person. 

ORG:DAI-Labor, TU Berlin 

The person’s position or job title. 

TITLE:Research Assistant 

Various telephone numbers (possible types 

include voice, fax, mobile, business, home).  

TEL;WORK;VOICE:030 /31473612 

TEL;WORK;FAX:[phone] 

Address information (again, different types of 

addresses are possible here). 

ADR;WORK;ENCODING=QUOTED-PRINTABLE:;;Technische 

Universit=E4t Berlin / DAI-Labor=0D=0ASekretariat 

GOR1-1=0D=0AF=ranklinstrasse 

28/29;Berlin;;10587;Deutschland 

The URL associated with the person. 

URL;WORK:http://www.dai-labor.de 

The person’s email addresses. 

EMAIL;PREF;INTERNET:[e-mail] 

The revision of the information contained in the 

vCard (a timestamp indicating the last 

modification). 

REV:20050411T125131Z 

 

END:VCARD 

Tableau 1: An Exemplary VCard 

 

6.1.3 Universal private address with XRI and I-Names 

I-names are universal private addresses intended to provide persistent addressing. An I-name 

integrates a person’s different electronic addresses, such as email, instant messaging, 

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FIDIS 

Future of Identity in the Information Society (No. 507512)

 

D2.3 

  

[Final], Version: 2.0 

File: fidis-wp2-del2.3.models.doc 

Page 50 

 

SMS/MMS etc. An I-name assigned to a person is, similarly to a domain name, supposed to 

be relatively long-lived and does not change even when the person’s contact data changes. 

Additionally, it protects the person from undesired communication attempts, such as spam, by 

operating on a permission-based communication infrastructure.  

I-names are based on the XRI (Extensible Resource Identifier) and XDI (XRI Data 

Interchange) specifications under development from OASIS. XRIs are a kind of Uniform 

Resource Identifier (URI) providing a standard syntax and resolution protocol for abstract 

identifiers, i.e. identifiers that are independent of a specific location, domain, application, or 

protocol. I-names are human-friendly identifiers (for a person, they may simply have the form 

“=GivenName.FamilyName”) that are usually combined with I-numbers, i.e. persistent 

machine-friendly identifiers assigned to resources (persons in this case). 

An I-name may be used to contact the respective person via a specific channel, such as email, 

only if the person has given permission to do so. Otherwise, the I-name may only be used to 

request this permission. These requests can automatically be filtered by an I-broker using a 

personal contact page via which the person may specify rules for contacting.  

6.1.3.1

 

References 

I-Names Explained 

http://www.xdi.org/i-names-explained.html

 

 

6.1.4  The Public-Key Cryptography Standards  #9 (PKCS #9) 

In the domain of authentication, PKCS defines some specification providing some definition 

of the person. 

The naturalPerson object class is a general-purpose auxiliary object class that is intended to 

hold attributes about human beings. It has been designed to be used within directory services 

based on the LDAP protocol and the X.500 family of protocols, where support for these 

attributes is considered useful. 

 

NaturalPerson 

•

 

emailAddress 

•

 

unstructuredName 

•

 

unstructuredAddress 

•

 

dateOfBirth 

•

 

placeOfBirth 

•

 

gender 

•

 

countryOfCitizenship 

•

 

countryOfResidence 

•

 

pseudonym 

•

 

serialNumber 

•

 

... -- For future extensions 

 

References 

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