At the moment, using a new web service typically means registering, laboriously entering personal details and thinking up another login name and password.

Open ID aims to remove some of the need to keep creating new login names and passwords by adopting the approach used by your computer when it looks up a site name you type into an browser address bar.

The Open ID approach revolves around an already established web identity that people nominate as their core identifier.

When this identity is used to sign on elsewhere, requests are sent back to the original place it was created to be verified.

While this could mean that people employ one login ID to for all the sites they use, it is more likely to let people significantly reduce the number of online identities they maintain.

Different identities could be maintained for different purposes.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/7234499.stm


I am not sure that's a good idea, wouldn't having one login make you more vunerable if that login was cracked buy a password cracker etc?

any techy people think its a good idea? would it not be worse if you got hacked with all that info in one place?

Can't see it happening as it would involve a huge amount of co-operation between the large IT companies, and any kind of IT standard usually takes at least a decade to get off the ground. Getting Microsoft and Google to agree on anything isn't going to happen.

Microsoft already have their "Passport" which I think a few companies trialled for a little while (the only one I remember was eBay) but now you will only find it on Microsoft sites.

There are many technical and logistical reasons for and against this kind of system but when it came down to it, people didn't want it and there was little cost benefit for companies to run it.