Re:Cutting the Gordian Knot of Web Identity
by patio11 on Tuesday September 06, 2011 @10:05AM
(#2965627)
There's a couple of very different problems getting presented here.
1) Password management, which is a solved problem by geeks and normals alike. Geeks use password managers. Normals use three passwords.
2) Single sign-on, which is less medicine and more vitamin as far as things go.
3) Net-wide identity. HERE BE DRAGONS.
As soon as you start doing the most trivial possible quanta of work to resolve the OMG DRAGONS, you start compromising the system's utility for password management and sign-on.
You'll need, minimally, new UI for "What information about yourself should we share with $NEW_SITE?" and for switching between users/profiles. This will happen in ways your users don't really understand.
Among the many OMG DRAGONS:
1) Microsoft, Mozilla, and Google can get into a corner and say "Heya, federated identity would be the awesome!" all they want, but there are laws in the US, Japan, Europe, and points beyond which don't make "It is an open standard!" int a compliance safe harbor.
2) You know that whole Google+ thing about real names and people having multiple identities which don't necessarily intersect with each other? Yeah, um, that.
3) Speaking of which, how about the other intractably hard problems for pre-filled biographical information like e.g. human names? They're, ahem, a wee bit tricky!
1) Password management, which is a solved problem by geeks and normals alike. Geeks use password managers. Normals use three passwords.
2) Single sign-on, which is less medicine and more vitamin as far as things go.
3) Net-wide identity. HERE BE DRAGONS.
As soon as you start doing the most trivial possible quanta of work to resolve the OMG DRAGONS, you start compromising the system's utility for password management and sign-on.
You'll need, minimally, new UI for "What information about yourself should we share with $NEW_SITE?" and for switching between users/profiles. This will happen in ways your users don't really understand.
Among the many OMG DRAGONS:
1) Microsoft, Mozilla, and Google can get into a corner and say "Heya, federated identity would be the awesome!" all they want, but there are laws in the US, Japan, Europe, and points beyond which don't make "It is an open standard!" int a compliance safe harbor.
2) You know that whole Google+ thing about real names and people having multiple identities which don't necessarily intersect with each other? Yeah, um, that.
3) Speaking of which, how about the other intractably hard problems for pre-filled biographical information like e.g. human names? They're, ahem, a wee bit tricky!