ITWire

According to NEC, the risk of violating user privacy is growing along with the growth of services such as payment and location-based services because these services verify users and terminals with IDs that can be used to track user access and behaviour history.

"As a result, a great deal of attention is being drawn to technology that enables service providers to confirm access privileges while protecting the anonymity of users and terminals," NEC says.

"However, this technology requires a large amount of computation power, comparable to a personal computer, which is a challenge for implementing on smartphones, where computing power and battery time are more limited." Anonymous authentication technology has the potential to solve these problems, according to NEC.

NEC, which is the only Asia-based company contributing to project, says it will be contributing advanced research on anonymous authentication technology that predates its membership to the consortium.

The project goes by the name LYRICS (Lightweight privacY-enhancing cRyptography for mobIle Contactless Services). It is being funded by the French national research agency, l'Agence Nationale de la Recherch (ANR).