OpenID @ Wordout

From now on, you can use your OpenID when registering or commenting here at Wordout. This is something I’ve thought about for a few months, ever since writing the article on what I thought was wrong with OpenID back in January. I was so focused on passwords and the fact there is simply no known way to protect the login process as it is.

I’m still unsure about passwords as a sole security mechanism, but there’s a thought in that old article that just stuck with me:

That concept is valid. If all I have to do is keep up with one password in one location, then I might go through the small effort it takes to create a really strong password. I might actually use upper case and lower case letters, mixed in with numbers and symbols and even different font sets if I could. Having only one thing to manage, I might choose to manage it well.

I headed over to JanRain to find out all I could about OpenID from the source. What I found over there convinced me that not only was OpenID here to stay, it was fast becoming the de facto standard for identity management used on the web. Hover over that yellow SnapShot icon to see the chart of adoption rates. That huge increase is mostly just the last 12 months.

Identity Management Is Becoming Critical

Adoption rates aren’t usually enough to make me jump on board. Hell, I didn’t buy a cd player until after 2000. What was it that made me choose OpenID? Because identity management is becoming critical on the web. OpenID is making progress in that direction and after 3 years still appears to avoid the “password” type problems I worry about so much. I haven’t heard of any serious security breaches with OpenID at the center. I gave it alot of thought, and decided the benefits outweigh the possibility of a breach. So from now on, when you go to the login or registration pages, you’ll have the option of using your OpenID! You can use your OpenID on comments as well.

Don’t have one? I wouldn’t be so sure. If you have a Yahoo, Flickr, AOL, SmugMug, Blogger, WordPress or LiveJournal account, you already have an OpenID provided by them. There’s more of them if you click that link. That doesn’t mean you have to use them. If you’d rather make one from scratch, or if you don’t have an OpenID yet, you can look at the top of the page here and use the Register With myOpenID to create an account, or just click the image below. After looking around, that’s who I chose, mainly because of their connection to JanRain.

I am Jon, but you already knew that, didn’t you?

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I want to thank ReadWriteWeb for continuing to produce articles like this.