bitful

Yahoo! has announced that it will support OpenID. What can this bring to the average web user?

In terms that I hope are not oversimplified, OpenID lets you log on several websites with one single set of details. You do not spread out that single set of details to all the websites (that would defy the point, it would be like using the same username and password for all your online logons).

Instead, OpenID gives you the option to log on to website A by briefly popping over to website B and logging on there. It means that A trusts B with verifying and keeping your identity safe.

You then might go to website C, click on log on, and because you are already logged on to website A (via B) you are offered to extend that logon to website C, either for the current session or for a longer period of time.

The full details of a decentralised single sign-on system are of course a bit more complex than that, but I hope this will give you an idea of where the benefit lies for you.

I have been using OpenID for several months now by pointing bitful.com towards an OpenID provider. From the end of January I (and another 250 millions users) can just use my Yahoo! login credentials because Yahoo! will act as website B in my example above.

Yahoo!, once again, really really rocks it for me.

This entry was posted on Friday, January 18th, 2008 at 8:28 am and last modified on January 18th, 2008 at 10:29 pm, and is filed under technology. 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.