Help and other info

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Choosing your i-name

When registering an i-name there a few simple things to remember:

Every i-name can do the same things; there are no functional differences between personal, business, or even community i-names.
The main difference between one i-name and the next are esthetic: does it start with =, @, or a community name? Does the i-name work for you?
The other important difference is cost: business names are most expensive. Community i-names are least.

Creating a new account

When you register an i-name it gets added to an account. If you don't already have an account you'll be prompted to create one.

To create a new LinkSafe account you must verify your email address. We only use your email address for communications and functions you request (like resetting your password) and we never share it with anyone unless you authorize it.

Verifying your email

After you submit your email address we send you an email at the address you gave. To complete your registration you need to click the link included in the email.

If you did not receive the email from us, the most likely explanation is that a junk mail filter has grabbed it. Check your junk folders and make sure that your filters are set to accept email from @linksafe.name.

Maintaining multiple accounts

You can maintain multiple accounts if you really want to. However, we recommend that you only keep one account for a number of reasons:

It's more convenient for you if all your inames are in one account - you can still maintain multiple personas that only you (and LinkSafe) know are connected.
Having one account is consistent with the concept of single-sign-on (why have multiple accounts if SSO let's you move between them?)
We're committed to helping you fully manage your identity, including multiple personas, within a single account. This is what we mean by "Pull Yourself Together".

The only reason to keep two accounts is if you don't want even LinkSafe to know they are connected. In this case you need to use different email addresses and credit cards under different names to setup the accounts and purchase the names.

Choose contact custodian options

All registrants of top-level i-names (personal and business i-names) must submit contact data to an XDI.ORG approved Contact Data Custodian. This contact data is maintained at the Contact Custodian (not LinkSafe) and is used only in the event you need to be contacted about a dispute with your i-name pursuant to the dispute resolution policy. There are two choices for submitting data:

Full contact data including name, email, and mailing address. The snail mail address provides a backup to the email address but may be of concern to those who have privacy concerns.
Email address only provided the registrant confirms they're understanding that a stale email address could lead to loss of registered name in the event they can't be contacted.

As further privacy protection, LinkSafe can provide i-name registrants a special email address that is only for the custodian

Choose registration options

After you've selected your i-name there are a few choices you need to make before completing registration:

How long is the registration. I-names can be registered for 1 to 10 years. The exception are a limited quantity of special 50-year names can still be purchased while supplies last.
Will this name be part of a new persona? Or will the name be a synonym for an existing i-name? See the next help topic for more on this option.

About i-numbers

To truly understand i-names you need to know about i-numbers.

I-names are human friendly and easy to communicate.
I-numbers on the other hand, are machine friendly and designed to be plentiful and unique.

I-names and i-numbers are inseperable: every i-name points to an i-number. For instance:

=inamers points to the i-number: =!54B8.B4E7.40F3.49C2

I-names can be re-assigned, transferred and point to a new i-number.
Howerver, i-numbers are intended to never be re-assigned and should always point to the same resource.
When multiple i-names point to the same i-number we call them "synonyms".

Note that i-names and the i-numbers they point to is publicly available information - it has to be for the system to work.

Accounts, i-names, i-numbers, and personas

Now that you know a bit about i-numbers, we can explain what we call a "persona".

Here's how accounts and personas relate to i-names and i-numbers:

A LinkSafe account contains one or more "personas".
A LinkSafe persona contains one i-number, one or more i-names (synonyms), and any i-services for that persona.

Adding an i-name: synonym or new persona?

When you add a second personal or business i-name you have a choice of how to add it. We call these two different approaches 'personas' and 'synonyms'. Here's what the terms mean:

An i-name added as a synonym is an i-name that points publicly to the first i-name. I-names that are synonyms are identical to each other in that they both resolve to the same i-number. I-names that are synonyms belong to a single persona.
An i-name added as a persona is it's own distinct entity on the internet - it has it's own i-number and there is no public connection between personas. The only place that two personas are related is in your LinkSafe account.

Paying for your i-name

For payment of i-names and services we accept:

Visa, MasterCard, Discover and American Express credit cards.
Identity Commons Gift Codes for 50-year names.

We have no plans to accept other forms of payment at this time. (We are interested in micro-payment solutions - contact us if you know of a good one)

Note that the data you submit for the credit card purchase is used by our merchant account processor. We do not retain any of the data from your credit card. See our Privacy Policy for more on this topic.

Configure i-name and i-services

After you register your i-name you must configure your i-services or your account may be un-usable. (The exception is when you add an i-name as a synonym - synonyms use the i-services already configured in your account).

The following three i-services are included with every new i-name (synonyms excepted) and should be configured:

I-name Single-Sign-On (ISSO). This service is where you store the password for your i-name. Until you configure it you'll only be able to login to LinkSafe and not other i-name enabled web sites.
Contact page. This service allows people to contact you through a public web page.
I-link forwarding service. With the forwarding service you can associate a tag with your i-name and use that combination to point to any URI. For instance @linksafe/+blog points to http://linksafe.wordpress.com.

Create Community

The Create Community option, when enabled, lets you add a registry to your i-name. A registry allows you to issue community i-names.

Email me my i-names

If you need a reminder of what i-names you have registered, go here, enter your email address, and we'll send you a list of all your i-names. Note that you will get a list of all i-names associated with that email address, even if the address is used on multiple accounts.