I am sure that most of you have heard of OpenID initiative. Well, if you haven’t, let’s just say that it allows you to create one login ID that you can use on many websites – that support OpenID. For example, by creating wordpress.com account, you automatically get an OpenID. The same case is with livejournal and some other web services. But, in order to login to livejournal or wordpress.com or blogger or whatever, you can choose to use the OpenID provider that you want. I mean, that is the whole purpose – not create multiple accounts, which is great, I bet you agree.
Bogmil Company accepts OpenID as a login and is its own OpenID provider. So, when I want to post a comment on a blog that I like that’s, say, hosted by blogger (blogspot.com), I select OpenID as my login type and I type the URL to my provider (which is bogmil.com/id). I will then be prompted to enter username and password that I created for my OpenID account. And then – voila!
But what happens when the purpose of this is defied? Webmasters are encouraged to implement this technology on their websites, and I must say that I *am* satisfied with the “I-support-OpenID” website list growth. Soon after it appeared, the technology received a pat on the back (and a marketing boost) by both Google and Yahoo. They both promised that they will, at least partially, implement their system – and they did.
Anyway, an hour ago I was checking some domains on the website http://www.whois.com . In the top right corner, I saw “login with OpenID”. Well, what the heck. I tried to login, and this is the message I got:
Wait, wait, what?! Isn’t that EXACTLY the opposite of what OpenID should do? Imagine what would happen if every single website wanted to do something like this. Well, we would be back to 0, zip, nada – again.
I will email whois.com regarding this matter.
