OpenID: The Online Identity

I have many websites that I am registered to, and after a while it really becomes a hassel trying to remember which username and password I registered with for that particular site. Maintaining identities across multiple websites is difficult. You register at each site, choosing a different username and password. It is tedious and many sites ask for information that you have already provided elsewhere. What if someone has already taken the username you want? It is said that most people end up choosing a username they don’t like, or simply leaving the site without registering.

Of course, there is something out there to make our lives a little easier–OpenID.

OpenID is your passport to all websites requiring a username and password. Once you create your OpenID, you’ll never need to go through the registration process again with sites that support OpenID. Unfortunately, the idea is still a little new, so there aren’t many sites that support OpenID.

Once you find a site that supports OpenID, the login process is fairly simple. I registered my OpenID within a few mintues and traveled to Technorati, which is a site that uses OpenID to claim your own blog. Once you do that, type your OpenID information. The website will redirect you to your OpenID Provider to login. Once authenticated, your OpenID provider will send you back to the website with the necessary credentials to log you in to that site. It may sound like a complicated procedure, but it really isn’t.

There are a few drawbacks of using OpenID however:

• Huge risk of phishing - Sites that claim to support OpenID can, during verification, send you to a page that looks like yours and then steal your password or any other information.

• The spam risk is very high - You can get automated and fake users/robots that logs in to your site and creates suspicious content.

• It’s still new - The OpenID technique is still very new and it doesn’t have enough users or traffic to make it work like a charm. Not to mention, the support for sites.

I would say that OpenID can be a great tool in the future, but it still needs a lot of work. I am able to remember (for now) my usernames and passwords so it won’t be a service I use often.