Slashdot Mirror
MyOpenID To Shut Down In February
kriston writes with news about an email sent to myOpenID users letting them know that it will be shut down February 1, 2014. The email reads:"
Hello,
I wanted to reach out personally to let you know that we have made the decision to end of life the myOpenID service. myOpenID will be turned off on February 1, 2014.
In 2006 Janrain created myOpenID to fulfill our vision to make registration and login easier on the web for people. Since that time, social networks and email providers such as Facebook, Google, Twitter, LinkedIn and Yahoo! have embraced open identity standards. And now, billions of people who have created accounts with these services can use their identities to easily register and login to sites across the web in the way myOpenID was intended.
By 2009 it had become obvious that the vast majority of consumers would prefer to utilize an existing identity from a recognized provider rather than create their own myOpenID account. As a result, our business focus changed to address this desire, and we introduced social login technology. While the technology is slightly different from where we were in 2006, I'm confident that we are still delivering on our initial promise – that people should take control of their online identity and are empowered to carry those identities with them as they navigate the web.
For those of you who still actively use myOpenID, I can understand your disappointment to hear this news and apologize if this causes you any inconvenience. To reduce this inconvenience, we are delaying the end of life of the service until February 1, 2014 to give you time to begin using other identities on those sites where you use myOpenID today.
Speaking on behalf of Janrain, I truly appreciate your past support of myOpenID.
Sincerely,
Larry
—
Larry Drebes, CEO, Janrain, Inc. "
I wanted to reach out personally to let you know that we have made the decision to end of life the myOpenID service. myOpenID will be turned off on February 1, 2014.
In 2006 Janrain created myOpenID to fulfill our vision to make registration and login easier on the web for people. Since that time, social networks and email providers such as Facebook, Google, Twitter, LinkedIn and Yahoo! have embraced open identity standards. And now, billions of people who have created accounts with these services can use their identities to easily register and login to sites across the web in the way myOpenID was intended.
By 2009 it had become obvious that the vast majority of consumers would prefer to utilize an existing identity from a recognized provider rather than create their own myOpenID account. As a result, our business focus changed to address this desire, and we introduced social login technology. While the technology is slightly different from where we were in 2006, I'm confident that we are still delivering on our initial promise – that people should take control of their online identity and are empowered to carry those identities with them as they navigate the web.
For those of you who still actively use myOpenID, I can understand your disappointment to hear this news and apologize if this causes you any inconvenience. To reduce this inconvenience, we are delaying the end of life of the service until February 1, 2014 to give you time to begin using other identities on those sites where you use myOpenID today.
Speaking on behalf of Janrain, I truly appreciate your past support of myOpenID.
Sincerely,
Larry
—
Larry Drebes, CEO, Janrain, Inc. "
You'd think this would be a great time to use that "read more" snip feature that's typical of reviews and interviews... or maybe this is a cue to start using Larry Drebes's signature everywhere?
At any rate, it's a little sad to see this OpenID provider going because it means less diversity in the single sign-on landscape, which is the whole point. At least OpenID itself will still be around!
Sincerely,
Larry
—
Larry Drebes, CEO, Janrain, Inc.
Bio questions? Ask me to start a Q&A journal. Computer analogies available for most topics!
A little used system that few people even know about is shutting down.
If you want news from today, you have to come back tomorrow.
"End of life" is a verb now?
This isn't the same as OpenID, the one run by the OpenID foundation. This is a random for profit company that I would wager not to many people have heard of. The company is still providing user integration software.
Want to login to some random site? Why not permanently associate that account with your Facebook, Google, Twitter, LinkedIn or Yahoo identity?
I'd gladly pay money for a similar service: maintain a consistent, yet anonymous online persona.
I'd never user a free one though.
I don't respond to AC's.
...and this is what I found:
http://stackoverflow.com/questions/5301896/what-are-the-differences-between-openid-and-myopenid
So my question: If myOpenID is "one of many providers," why does this rate an article of its own? Or am I missing the significance of the event?
The significance is that myOpenID was the largest and most well-known dedicated OpenID provider*. If it's shutting down, that's arguably the beginning of the end for OpenID in general.
*Many larger companies like Google and Microsoft also acted as providers, but pretty much as an afterthought.
I think it's cool that the company didn't wine about their major cash cow going away. Instead, they went with the flow and are still in business. I wish other tech companies would do that too.
Yeah, I don't recall a Slashdot story from when getopenid.org shut down a year or two ago...
#DeleteChrome
<link rel="openid.server" href="http://www.myopenid.com/server">
<link rel="openid.delegate" href="http://anoncoward.myopenid.com/">
<!-- What this says is that this web page in question is owned by the owner of delegate (that is, anoncoward) and furthermore server (the OpenID provider actually) may be used to verify ownership of delegate.-->
<!-- When you wish to change the OpenID provider, you simply change these two lines. At your own website. Thus you don't have to worry about either running your own OpenID server, or having one shutting down on you (as you can easily switch). -->
"Since that time, social networks and email providers such as Facebook, Google, Twitter, LinkedIn and Yahoo! have embraced open identity standards."
And now these companies by converging on this supposed standard (and other standards such as cellular phone numbers) have effectively extinguished anonymity on the Web. It just goes to show that you Don't have to Be Evil to do evil.
Right now I'm trying to create a new Yahoo email address because some forum requires that I have a real email address, a permanent adresss that they can spam, rather than a throwaway 10-minute email address. But guess what, Yahoo wants me to surrender my cellphone number. For what? So the NSA can add a few more bytes to its data center?
If myOpenID is "one of many providers," why does this rate an article of its own?
When StackOverflow first was launched, you could only log in with OpenID I believe. MyOpenID was one of the more prominent providers, and so there are probably a lot of people that if nothing else still use myOpenID to log in to the realm of StackOverflow sites... thus worthy of note on a site like Slashdot in a way that other OpenID providers may not be.
It's good to know, I use it myself for a number of sites - basically wherever I can. What would be really nice is if myOpenID handed off user accounts to some other OpenID provider on request...
What I really do not want to do is use Facebook as an authentication provider since so many sites request permissions to do things on Facebook I do not want to let them do, and some site logins fail without those permissions.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Should have said you are shutting it down for undisclosed US Government reasons that your lawyer sitting next to you won't let you talk about.
The significance is that the CEO sent a sad email out to all myOpenID users. I got one and don't remember ever using their service, although I imagine I did at some point.
I liked the MyOpenID idea, and don't like the idea of using a Google or Facebook account across the web. But more than half of the time I've tried to log in with MyOpenID over the past two years, the site has been having technical trouble. A login system that does that could cripple your Internet experience. So I ended up moving to other options.
We've been ordered to turn all of our records over to the NSA, including any personally identifying information we may possess about you.
I received this email earlier today. It made no mention of the fact that generating new SSL certificates for certificate authentication on their website broke years ago, and nobody could be bothered to fix it. It's still broken, in fact. I'm guessing their decision to shut it down was more out of apathy than anything else.
Oh why sure, I'd love to have my facebook hacked and every website I visit being exposed.
I run: Windows, OS X, Linux, FreeBSD. Just because you have a hammer, doesn't mean everything is a nail.
Too many corporations have perverted the OpenID standard to the point of exclusivity and not respecting my privacy.
Mozilla's sign-in system is the only one left that does.
If you go to your account page, go to "My Logins" tab - there you can add a login with Google, Facebook, Login or many other options. StackExchange itself also has its own auth server so you just just create an account there if you prefer.
I can't remember when it was, but some time ago I believe StackExchange prompted me to move away from only having the OpenID login, so they are basically all ready to go...
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
If there's one phrase that really brings out the GOM in me it's
"I wanted to reach out"
Never understood, why we can't use GPG public keys as logins. Why always reinvent the wheel ten-thousand times? :-/
That's why I am very opposed to any chain-of-login service. I Do Not Want Facebook/Google/Twitter/NSA magic logins, and I don't want OpenID magic logins either. Never mind that an independent service like MyOpenID might be a less-onerous way to do follow-me logins, it is still a follow-me login. Don't simplify things for the data miners.
Created my account in January 2010, used it for a lot of stuff.
Single sign-on turns into single point of failure... again.
I'm sure as hell not going to use Google, Microsoft, Yahoo, LinkedIn, Facebook or whomever for single sign on. I have enough trouble trying to prevent people from sucking me into Google+ and keeping my Youtube account separate from my Gmail account. LinkedIn and Facebook already want to get into my email to "build my social network" further. None of these are trustworthy companies.
I guess I'm going to have to add a dozen more passwords to my password database.
Exactly. Password reuse is bad, whether it's directly or via an authentication service.
I run: Windows, OS X, Linux, FreeBSD. Just because you have a hammer, doesn't mean everything is a nail.
I'm not sure. But I wouldn't be surprised. Actually I just managed to create a Hotmail address by providing a disposable email address and answering the trick, I mean security, question.
As a soon-to-be-former Google fan, I find it quite sad that I'd now be recommending Hotmail (aka Live/Outlook) as the least evil service among the Big 3 email providers.