Patent ID: 7769696

Claim:
An authentication processing and information storing apparatus performing requester authentication processing and storing thereon personal information of the owner, comprising: personal information storing circuitry storing thereon the personal information of the owner, which is disclosed to a predetermined accessible person of a plurality of predetermined accessible persons upon authentication; accessible person information storing circuitry storing thereon accessible person characteristic information of each predetermined accessible person indicating a physical characteristic of each predetermined accessible person; wherein at least one of the plurality of predetermined accessible persons is someone other than the owner; requester authentication circuitry receiving requester characteristic information indicating a physical characteristic of a requester who requests the personal information of the owner, and performing authentication processing of the requester using the requester characteristic information and the accessible person characteristic information stored on said accessible person information storing circuitry wherein if a computed correlation between the requester characteristic information and the accessible person characteristic information is greater than or equal to a predetermined reference value, the requester is authenticated as a predetermined accessible person; access level setting circuitry setting an access level, which is a level of the personal information to be disclosed to the requester, when said requester authentication circuitry authenticates the requester as the accessible person; personal information output circuitry outputting a part of the personal information stored on said personal information storing circuitry to the requester in accordance with the access level set by said access level setting circuitry; and image capturing circuitry for generating the requester characteristic information by capturing an image of the requester while the information storing apparatus is retained by the owner.