From the Demo 2007 show floor: When you want to buy from a Web site or open a piece of mail, how do you know if you should trust the site or sender? Will thieves try to steal your identity, flood you with spam, or sneak malware onto your system? It’s a nasty dilemma, and the wrong decision can have far-reaching consequences. One likely solution — part of a Symantec’s Identity Initiative — relies on identity and reputation to help consumers make smart decisions. A back-end platform and a desktop client (which will ship sometime this year as a yet to be determined part of the Norton 2008 product line), the Identity Initiative taps into Symantec’s worldwide labs and response centers, which monitor spam attacks and collect information and make assessment on sites around the clock. Here’s how it works: When a site or email asks for personal information, the Norton client pops up with a rating of the requester’s reliability and a recommendation about whether you should share your information. Ultimately users make the decisions, but the Norton client provides informed, up-to-the minute advice. If Norton gives a green light, you can proceed with impunity. Similarly, a red light warns you that skullduggery is afoot. For those maybe-yes maybe-no cases, users can have the Norton client help manage their credentials and mask their identity. By clicking a checkbox, for instance, users can have Norton generate a site specific e-mail address (as opposed to their regular address), which they can supply when requested. Norton will then route the email as needed. Similar safeguards are planned for VoIP numbers and one-time credit card numbers (in cooperation with financial institutions).Symantec plans to use other ID systems, including Yahoo ID and OpenID, to augment their reputation information. Pricing and distribution are not yet determined. Smart money says Symantec will release at least some version of this as a free download, with a paid enhanced version available as well.We’ll almost certainly be seeing a greater industry-wide emphasis on the concept of reputation as a means of circumventing fraud, and I think Symantec has its heart and head in the right place with this initiative. This app is a good start, even if it isn’t the last word in identity management. Anything that gives nervous consumers a leg up on the bad guys, though, is more than welcome. Security