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OpenID Overview

An OpenID is an account from a "Provider" site that is shared in a special way with other OpenID participating sites (known as the "Consumers"). By sharing your OpenID to be used on multiple sites, logging in to Consumer sites is simplified since you don't need to use/remember yet another password. Also, registration is usually streamlined, as you only need to enter common details (like name and email) once, and then that data can be shared automatically along with your OpenID credentials. The primary benefits of using an OpenID are:

  • reducing the number of sets of profiles/password-credentials you must maintain
  • speeding up registration by sharing pre-filled data
  • increasing trust, reliability, and security by consolidating login credentials to reputable Providers the web community knows and has confidence in

This site is an OpenID Consumer site, which means you can use practically any standard OpenID to login. You can obtain an OpenID for free from various Providers.

An OpenID entry field is usually identified with the official OpenID icon to help you recognize it easily. Formally, your OpenID is a full URL that includes your Provider account identity in some way (for instance, "http://someuser.myopenid.com"). Most Consumer sites, including this one, ask you to enter the full Provider OpenID URL format to reduce confusion. Check with your Provider for questions on how to format your OpenID URL from them.

OpenID Security

OpenID's are safe and secure. Firstly, OpenID Consumers and Providers usually communicate via secure https, meaning the channel is encrypted and safe from snooping. In addition, most of the Providers that you are likely to use for your OpenID are large, well-trusted web services such as Yahoo and Google. Conforming OpenID Consumer sites use well-tested and reliable standard libraries.

Finally, with OpenID, a Consumer never stores your full authentication credentials, only half of it (the OpenID URL itself, not the password). This means there is less "surface area" for your online identity to be attacked/compromised, because the few major OpenID Provider(s) you use are the only ones with such sensitive information, even if you use your OpenID on many Consumer sites.

How an OpenID login generally works:

  1. You visit a Consumer (OpenID participating site), and enter your OpenID into the site's registration/login prompt.
  2. The Consumer will do some behind-the-scenes stuff for you, resulting in your browser redirecting to the Provider who has authority over your OpenID.
  3. The Provider will ask you if sharing your OpenID with the Consumer is ok, and additionally may also ask you to login/authenticate. Note: Most Providers will remember this authorization and won't ask you again on that same computer for that same site (at least for awhile). So on later logins, the Provider will likely automatically skip this step without you needing to do anything.
  4. The Provider will redirect your browser back to the original page you started from, including a special signal to let the Consumer know that you've agreed to sharing your OpenID and that everything is valid and secure.
  5. The Consumer will now "trust" your login. If it's your first time to register/login to this Consumer, the site may ask for additional information to complete your registration. As with any normal login (username/password), you should only be asked those registration questions once. After that, an OpenID should be all you need to login to the site.

That's it! The Consumer and Provider take care of all the complicated details. All you have to do is remember and use your OpenID, and affirm a simple authorization question the first time you use your OpenID on a site. It's really quite simple, and yet is incredibly powerful in improving how you manage user accounts across the web.

Still confused or not yet convinced? Read more about the OpenID movement and also about the benefits of OpenID for you and for the web as a whole.

I like it! How do I get started with an OpenID?

You probably already have one or more OpenID's and don't even know it. A whole host of well-known and often-used web services have opened up their authentication systems to being OpenID Provider compliant. If you have an account with one of those Providers, you don't need to do anything but start using it on a participating Consumer site! It's that easy.

Google, Wordpress.com, Yahoo, Microsoft, AOL/AIM, MySpace, Flickr, and LiveJournal are just some of the major Providers that are already capable of being used as OpenID's. In addition, most Providers will give you a free OpenID to share across various sites, including MyOpenID, OpenID.org (mobile friendly!), and many more!

Check FAQ #7 or your OpenID Provider of choice for how to specify/use your OpenID URL.

How do I pick a Provider?

There are slightly different feature sets that each Provider offers, but overall, one OpenID is much like another. Almost all OpenID's are universal and can be used with any and all participating Consumer sites. However, you usually can't use one Provider's OpenID on another "competing" Provider's site. For instance, Google itself won't accept a Yahoo OpenID, etc.

Since OpenID's are generally comparable, the best thing is probably just to pick the Provider you know/trust the most, and use that OpenID as much as possible on the various Consumer sites you visit. Using multiple OpenID's is certainly ok, but it gets more confusing and defeats part of the main purpose -- to consolidate into fewer accounts. The good news is, if you pick and use one OpenID for awhile, and later decide you want to change, you likely already have several others you can switch to using easily.

Whichever OpenID Provider you choose, you're literally only moments away from being able to register/login to tens of thousands of sites across the web. We believe strongly that OpenID is an important and healthy movement for the web community, and that's why 2static.it joined the ever growing list of OpenID participating sites. Pick your OpenID and register to get started right away!