Yahoo tests support for OpenID

by Jeremy Kirk

January 9, 2008 —

Yahoo appears close to implementing OpenID, a Web authentication standard that
relieves people of the need to remember multiple passwords to log into different
Web sites.

Yahoo controls a domain
me.yahoo.com, which shows
a short message indicating the company will act as an identity provider for
OpenID.

Code on pages at Flickr.com,
owned by Yahoo, could also let a person use their Flickr login and profile for
logging into other OpenID-compatible sites. The code can be seen by viewing
the source of Flickr photostream pages, and points to https://open.login.yahooapis.com/openid/op/auth.

OpenID, an open-source project, has gained support from two other major Internet
players, Microsoft
and Google. However, those
companies are not widely providing support on their sites for OpenID yet.

But an early implementation of OpenID by Yahoo could provide a spark for broader
support, some say.

"I expect Yahoo's implementation to be a major influence in encouraging
OpenID 2 adoption," wrote
Simon Willison, a freelance Web consultant and developer who used to work
for Flickr. In January last year, Willison launched idproxy.net,
a Web site that links Yahoo IDs and OpenIDs.

OpenID is referred to as a decentralized system since no one company or entity
controls all of the identity information. It gives users more power to determine
who they want to share their identity with and avoids the potential security
problems of having a massive amount of data locked up in a single database.
The system is also free.

Web sites acting as an identity provider for OpenID give users a unique URL
(Uniform Resource Locator). When a person encounters another Web site supporting
OpenID, they can enter that URL along with the password they have registered
with the identity provider, which is then verified in order to login at the
new site.

The person is then allowed to carry their profile or other information into
the new Web site, a concept known as single sign-on. It means that people may
need fewer passwords but would be able to securely share their data and login
on more Web sites.

A variety of companies and Web sites are supporting OpenID, such as AOL, LiveJournal,
Technorati and mobile operator Orange, which is owned by France Télécom,
according to the OpenID Web
site. Hundreds
of other Web sites are also using OpenID.

Yahoo could not be reached for comment.

IDG News Service