Patent ID: 7590859

Claim:
A method of accomplishing two-factor user authentication, comprising: providing first and second user authentication methods, wherein the first user authentication method is an authentication method selected from authentication methods based on what a user knows and authentication methods based on a characteristic of the user and the second user authentication method is based on a token distributed to the user; communicating authentication data for both user authentication methods to a first web site using the internet; authenticating the user at the first web site using the first user authentication method; if the user is successfully authenticated at the first web site, enabling the communication of token-based authentication data corresponding to the token from the first web site to a second web site using the internet, the authentication data including a token code; authenticating the user at the second web site based on the token-based authentication data transferred from the first web site; transmitting results of the authentication at the second web site to the first web site; and if the authentication at the second web site is unsuccessful, restricting access to sensitive web content on the first web site.