The newspaper said the software giant had confirmed the step down after one of the service's biggest backers, eBay Inc. (EBAY: news, chart, profile), said Wednesday it would stop using Passport next month in favor of its own product. It said few customers had taken up the Microsoft (MSFT: news, chart, profile) service. Passport keeps track of online consumers' credit card and password information as they move from site to site. It has drawn the ire of privacy advocates, industry regulators and technology security experts, who in 2003 found a security glitch that could have led to massive identity theft, the paper said.
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