OpenID Fan Club Is Shrinking

A.B. VerHausen writes "Even though there's a whole new Web site devoted to understanding and using OpenID, some companies are dropping the login method altogether. OStatic is reporting that the 'free Web site network Wetpaint announced recently that it will no longer support OpenID as a login option for its wiki, citing low usage and high support costs as reasons.' Apparently, fewer than 200 registered users bothered with OpenID, and the extra QA and development time doesn't make it worthwhile to support. This can't come as welcome news on top of the internal issues the article mentions the OpenID Foundation is having now, too." I've actually been quite happy with OpenID, since I have spawned far too many username/password pairs over the last 20-plus years, but it's a major chicken-and-egg problem. Hopefully someone out there will build a better mousetrap ...

Comments

Local software solution instead

[wealthychef]

Rather than trust an external site with all my security, I use a tool called 1Password for Macintosh (there is a similar tool for windows) that secures my passwords in once place and protects them with a single master password. No OpenID required, just the Mac Keychain.

Re:Local software solution instead

[Just Some Guy]

Rather than trust an external site with all my security, I use a tool called 1Password for Macintosh (there is a similar tool for windows) that secures my passwords in once place and protects them with a single master password.

Rather than trust an external site with my security, I use OpenID on my home server that secures my single password in one place and never distributes any of my login information to other servers.

Re:Local software solution instead

[davester666]

It's because everybody wants to be a provider (so they get all your valuable information from you, as well as your surfing habits from other web sites that use OpenID when you sign on using your ID), but pretty much nobody wants to just accept an OpenID login (as they wind up just sending valuable information to another company with no direct benefit to themselves [and they could care less about the customer's convenience]).

Re:Local software solution instead

[Sancho]

Frankly, I don't trust other computers. I try my best not to log on to online services when I'm not using a trusted computer.

I'm sure as hell not going to plug a USB drive with my password database into an untrusted computer.

Re:Local software solution instead

[GooberToo]

And this is exactly why OpenID never caught on. You implemented it the only way it makes sense. For the vast majority of people this is too much. For companies requiring a login, they garner no information about who is visiting their site so they have no incentive.

The combination of the two means no one wants to accept OpenID and it is too painful to truly use securely. Whereby securely means, no user information released.

What bothers me about OpenID.

[WiiVault]

I am not a user so YMMV, but I personally don't like all my eggs in one basket. I use different logins and passwords on most of the sites I visit. I hardly want a security breach on some forum I post to to be able to have access to my email or credit cards site. Centralized is great for some things, but I simply don't trust any company to be as tight with their security as I am with my own. To them a breach is a "whoops, sorry!" to me it could be personally and financially devastating.

Re:What bothers me about OpenID.

[roemcke]

You already have all your eggs in one basket. Virtually all online sites will send you new passwords by e-mail if you forget them. If your e-mail account get compromised, an attacker can request and intercept new passwords for any online site he wants to access.

It Is Not Prominantly Displayed

[phantomcircuit]

Do you see OpenID anywhere on the front page to Facebook?

There's your problem, people don't know that OpenID even exists.

Re:a site that uses nothing but OpenID

[Blakey Rat]

Yes, but the difference is that Passport has worked reliably for years and years now... 10 years, if I'm remembering correctly... and I've yet to flawlessly log in to anything using OpenID even once.

I have to admit, that after typing that post I went back to StackOverflow and they've actually fixed their faulty instructions for how to enter Yahoo IDs. (It used to read: my.yahoo.com/username which never worked, AFAIK. Now it just says to use www.yahoo.com and have Yahoo ask your username, which does appear to work.)

But look at it this way, availability-wise:

If you use OpenID with a delegate, you're dependent on your own web server working, at least one of your OpenID providers working, and StackOverflow working.
If you use OpenID with no delegate, you're dependent on your OpenID provider working, and StackOverflow working.
If they use Passport, they're dependent on Passport.com and StackOverflow.com both being working.

If StackOverflow had their own login, you only have one dependency: itself. Clearly this is the best option if you want to optimize for availability.

And what really makes me bitter here is that the goal isn't to make their website easier or quicker or more available to use, it's just a political campaign to increase the number of people who use some crappy, poorly-designed, technology. OpenID is too crappy to succeed on its own merits, so now we have website "activists" trying to force its use... that's crummy.

That is a bug, not a feature

[coryking]

Lets say I've hacked your OpenID account. Now I can go visit sites like StackOverflow and post as you. Since they dont require email verification when you "sign-up", it doesn't matter if you had an existing account with them before I hacked you. I can go anywere that takes OpenID and "silently" impersonate you regardless of if you used the website before. No email verification means you'd probably never know it either. Well.. until you google "AvitarX" and find yourself posting horse porn on some OpenID site.