Yahoo! opens up to OpenID

Stephen Withers
Friday, 18 January 2008 02:18

Your IT - Home IT

Yahoo! accountholders will soon be able to use any web site supporting OpenID without creating a separate username and password. Conversely, OpenIDs will be accepted for login at me.yahoo.com.

Public beta testing of Yahoo!'s OpenID service will begin on January 30, 2008, tripling the number of OpenID accounts to 368 million.

The idea behind OpenID is that a single identity should be usable at multiple sites. Users can select whichever OpenID provider they decide to trust. It may also be a provider of services that are accessible with an OpenID - as in the cases of Yahoo!, AOL, WordPress and others - or it can just provide OpenIDs. Examples from the latter category include VeriSign and claimID.

Approximately ten thousand sites allow the use of OpenID. Apart from reducing the number of usernames and passwords you need to remember for the sites you regularly use, an OpenID is especially convenient for posting comments on news items or blog entries as it avoids the need to create a account that you might not use again for months.

When you log in using an OpenID, authentication is handled by whichever provider you used to create that identity. Yahoo! encourages its uses to set up a sign-in seal - a personalised image or text - so they can tell when a request for a Yahoo! ID really is coming from Yahoo!.

"A Yahoo! ID is one of the most recognizable and useful accounts to have on the Internet and with our support of OpenID, it will become even more powerful," said Ash Patel, executive vice president of platforms and infrastructure at Yahoo!.

"Supporting OpenID gives our users the freedom to leverage their Yahoo! ID both on and off the Yahoo! network, reducing the number of usernames and passwords they need to remember and offering a single, trusted partner for managing their online identity."

Yahoo! is also encouraging sites that accept OpenID to display a "Sign in with Your Yahoo ID" button to help users recognise the facility.

OpenID originated in the open source community and is managed by the OpenID Foundation. Yahoo! was a participant in the development of the OpenID 2.0 standard.

"Yahoo!'s commitment to an open web is a significant validation of the OpenID movement and Yahoo!'s adoption of the standard today immediately triples the total number of people able to use OpenID," said Scott Kveton, chairman of the Board of Directors for the OpenID Foundation.

"With Yahoo! actively engaged with the OpenID Foundation and its community to promote OpenID, Yahoo!'s users will be able to more easily access the many sites across the web that support the standard, and the potential for access to Yahoo!'s vast international user base will create an even more powerful incentive for additional websites to begin accepting OpenID users."