You use passwords, possibly dozens of passwords, to authenticate to websites daily. Passwords are a useful authentication tool because they function as a “thing-you-know” (a shared secret between you and the server) and because passwords can be changed (in case of loss, unlike say, your fingerprints).
In a diatribe against OpenID titled, “Goodbye, Passwords. [...]
By Emil Sit
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Posted in Technology
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Also tagged authentication, bruce schneier, cookies, e-mail, encryption, FastMail, GMail, ING, Kim Cameron, password, randall stross, security, session, Vanguard
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OpenID has been generating a lot of buzz this past month:
OpenID is a decentralized authentication mechanism that allows a
consuming web-site to verify that “you” can authenticate to a
particular identity provider (keyed by a URL). Big names from AOL
to SmugMug to WordPress have recently
announced that they are being OpenID providers.
Why so many providers? For [...]