Patent ID: 7877611

Claim:
A method that is implemented by a computer for reducing the occurrence of unauthorized use of on-line resources, comprising: storing business rules for a plurality of companies having on-line resources; receiving a message indicating a request from a user to use on-line resources; identifying a company associated with the requested on-line resource from among the plurality of companies; retrieving the stored business rules for the identified company; determining whether the request requires authentication; enabling the request to be fulfilled without authentication if the determination indicates that authentication is not required; obtaining an indicia of physical identification from the user if the determination instead indicates that authentication is required; comparing the obtained indicia to a stored indicia for the user; and enabling the request to be fulfilled if the obtained indicia matches the stored indicia, wherein the step of determining whether the request requires authentication includes determining whether stored business rules for the identified company associated with the requested on-line resource indicates that authentication for the user is required, and wherein at least the determining and comparing steps are implemented by the computer.