1 post tagged “confusion”

I admit it. I just don't "get" the whole "OpenID" thing. A lot of sites are jumping on this particular bandwagon, particularly blogs where you may need to sign in to leave a comment.  I can appreciate that we want to make it easier for people to remember logins and passwords, and making one standard way of doing that may be a good idea.

Here's the problem.  Apparently, through no real fault of my own, I now have four or five different OpenIDs. A whole bunch of people have signed up and signed on as being OpenID providers.  But I have no way of reconciling the different IDs. First, there's the openID I signed up for at myopenid.com.  Then there's the flickr OpenID, the Yahoo! OpenID, and now apparently also a Vox OpenID.  But I have no way of associating those OpenIDs with each other. So, let's say that I've been using one OpenID at plaxo.com (which is true).  Let's also say that for whatever reason, I decide I want to use a different OpenID.

Now, plaxo allows me to associate more than one OpenID with my profile, but the process is kind of a pain, and it's not the only place I use OpenID. I guess I'm mostly looking forward.  If some site I use regularly becomes an OpenID provider, am I forever stuck with having to remember the extra OpenID I may not want to use any more? How is this helping? (Yes, yes, I'm a whiner. Waaaaahhhh!)