Patent ID: 7246243

Claim:
An identification system comprising: a plurality of end terminals, a plurality of electronic commerce service provider (ECSP) units, wherein each one of the plurality of ECSP units receives a transaction request message containing ciphered biometrics data of a user and a user identifier of said user transmitted from the plurality of end terminals via a communications network and for each received transaction request message, one of the plurality of ECSP units transmits an authentication request message containing said ciphered biometrics data and said user identifier to said network; and an authentication server comprising a database for mapping a plurality of registered biometrics data to a plurality of corresponding registered user identifiers, wherein the authentication server receives the authentication request messages from the plurality ECSP units via said network, and for each of the received authentication request messages, the authentication server decipheres the ciphered biometrics data and compares the deciphered biometrics data to one of the registered biometrics data which is mapped in said database to the user identifier contained in the received authentication request message and returns a reply to the plurality of ECSP units via said network indicating that said transaction request message is authenticated if the received biometrics data coincides with said mapped biometrics data.