Now that a large number of websites have begun to support the OpenID single sign-on system, I decided to register one for myself: http://ramnath.r.iyer.myopenid.com/. If you see a comment on a Blogger or any other OpenID-supported website associ­ated with this ID, then you know who that is.…

At its core, OpenID is a system that allows the user to register just once with an OpenID provider, and use the same username and password on all other sites (that support the system, of course). There can be many providers, but the user’s ID itself can be used to deter­mine which provider is to be contacted for verifi­ca­tion. If you login frequently using a single personal computer acces­sible only to yourself, you can even install an SSL certifi­cate that estab­lishes your identity to the OpenID provider. In other words, you can login without a password on that computer.

It is impor­tant to note that this system does not provide any ‘web of trust,’ so you cannot use OpenID to ‘prove’ who you are. It is quite easy to create a fake ID and pretend to be someone else.

Here is a list of public OpenID providers, so you can get one for yourself.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, January 15th, 2008 at 07:51 and is filed under Daily Rant. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.