Patent ID: 7810145

Claim:
A distributed network for storage and retrieval of data, the network comprising: a plurality of data origin servers that store items of data, each data origin server including a data origin memory device in which items of data are stored; a credential generator located in at least one of the plurality of the data origin servers and for generating a first set of credentials and a second set of credentials, each of the first set of credentials uniquely associated with an owner of corresponding items of data, and comprising a globally unique identifier of the owner of the corresponding items of data to enable search and retrieval of items of data, each of the second set of credentials associated with a user of the items of data and configured to be associated with one or more credentials of the first set of credentials; a plurality of credential servers, each credential server including a credential memory device storing a plurality of representations of the first set of credentials and data-origin-server associations, each of the plurality of associations including a computer identifier and a computer address for each of a plurality of the data origin servers that store items of data, wherein the plurality of credential servers do not store any other identifiable data related to 1) owners of the items of data or 2) the owners' credentials, each credential server configured to link an authenticated user to a respective data origin server storing items of data corresponding to the user's credential; and an authentication server including one or more memories storing credentials and representations of credentials and computer-executable instructions that, when executed, 1) authenticate one or more of the users based at least in part on each of the users's associated credentials, 2) if authentication fails, provide an interface to register a user with one or more of the plurality of data origin servers, and 3) link an authenticated user to one or more credential servers associated with the user's credential, the authentication server configured to receive credentials from the plurality of data origin servers and transmit a representations of credentials to one or more of the plurality of credential servers.