Microsoft Technology Licensing, LLC

Sudheer Koneru

Arnold S Miller

Milan Shah

Yuval Neeman

Alan R Whitney

Peter J Cook

Rudolph Balaz

Aaron M Contorer

Lucy Chao

Michael H Tuchen

Gordon Mangione

Jeffrey A Teper

A system and method is disclosed for tracking a user across both secure and non-secure areas on an Internet and/or Intranet site. In one aspect of the system and method, when a user first accesses a non-secure area, such as a public area, the user is assigned a token, such as a globally-unique identifier (GUID). The token is used as a key to a database entry on a server computer for tracking the user in non-secure areas. When the user first accesses a secure area, the user is prompted to enter a user identification and a password. The user identification is then used as the key to the database entry, rather than the token. The server then uses the user identification to track the user across both secure and non-secure areas.

Tracking a user across both secure and non-secure areas on the Internet,

A distributed file system uses objects to model the behavior of components of the distributed file system. Each object has an associated logical path name and physical address. An aggregation of all the logical path names comprises a distributed name space which can be logically partitioned into domains. Each domain includes a domain folder object which maps logical path names of objects in the domain containing the domain folder object, into addresses in the distributed system where the objects are stored. The addresses of the objects are used to access the objects in order to retrieve information from the distributed system.

Distributed file system providing a unified name space with efficient

An Online Brokering Service provides user authentication and billing services to allow users to anonymously and securely purchase online services from Service Providers (SP) sites (e.g., World Wide Web sites) over a distributed public network, which may be an untrusted public network such as the Internet. Users and SP sites initially register with the Brokering Service, and are provided with respective client and server software components for using the Brokering Service. In one embodiment, when a user initially connects to an SP site, the SP site transmits a challenge message over the public network to the user computer, and the user computer generates and returns and cryptographic response message (preferably generated using a password of the user). The SP site then passes the response message to the Brokering Service, which in-turn looks up the user's password and authenticates the response message. If the response message is authentic, the Online Brokering Service transmits an anonymous ID to the SP site, which can be used for subsequently billing the user. In addition, the Online Brokering Service transmits user-specific access rights data to the SP site, allowing the SP site to customize its services for the particular user. Billing events generated by the SP sites are transmitted to the Brokering Service, which maintains a user-viewable bill that shows all charges from all SP sites accessed by the user. Advantageously, the payment information (e.g., credit card number) and other personal information of users are not exposed to the SP sites, and are not transmitted over the distributed network.

System and method for providing trusted brokering services over a

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Redmond, WA, United States of America

Sudheer Koneru