MyOpenID To Shut Down In February 78
kriston writes with news about an email sent to myOpenID users letting them know that it will be shut down February 1, 2014. The email reads:"
Hello,
I wanted to reach out personally to let you know that we have made the decision to end of life the myOpenID service. myOpenID will be turned off on February 1, 2014.
In 2006 Janrain created myOpenID to fulfill our vision to make registration and login easier on the web for people. Since that time, social networks and email providers such as Facebook, Google, Twitter, LinkedIn and Yahoo! have embraced open identity standards. And now, billions of people who have created accounts with these services can use their identities to easily register and login to sites across the web in the way myOpenID was intended.
By 2009 it had become obvious that the vast majority of consumers would prefer to utilize an existing identity from a recognized provider rather than create their own myOpenID account. As a result, our business focus changed to address this desire, and we introduced social login technology. While the technology is slightly different from where we were in 2006, I'm confident that we are still delivering on our initial promise – that people should take control of their online identity and are empowered to carry those identities with them as they navigate the web.
For those of you who still actively use myOpenID, I can understand your disappointment to hear this news and apologize if this causes you any inconvenience. To reduce this inconvenience, we are delaying the end of life of the service until February 1, 2014 to give you time to begin using other identities on those sites where you use myOpenID today.
Speaking on behalf of Janrain, I truly appreciate your past support of myOpenID.
Sincerely,
Larry
—
Larry Drebes, CEO, Janrain, Inc. "
I wanted to reach out personally to let you know that we have made the decision to end of life the myOpenID service. myOpenID will be turned off on February 1, 2014.
In 2006 Janrain created myOpenID to fulfill our vision to make registration and login easier on the web for people. Since that time, social networks and email providers such as Facebook, Google, Twitter, LinkedIn and Yahoo! have embraced open identity standards. And now, billions of people who have created accounts with these services can use their identities to easily register and login to sites across the web in the way myOpenID was intended.
By 2009 it had become obvious that the vast majority of consumers would prefer to utilize an existing identity from a recognized provider rather than create their own myOpenID account. As a result, our business focus changed to address this desire, and we introduced social login technology. While the technology is slightly different from where we were in 2006, I'm confident that we are still delivering on our initial promise – that people should take control of their online identity and are empowered to carry those identities with them as they navigate the web.
For those of you who still actively use myOpenID, I can understand your disappointment to hear this news and apologize if this causes you any inconvenience. To reduce this inconvenience, we are delaying the end of life of the service until February 1, 2014 to give you time to begin using other identities on those sites where you use myOpenID today.
Speaking on behalf of Janrain, I truly appreciate your past support of myOpenID.
Sincerely,
Larry
—
Larry Drebes, CEO, Janrain, Inc. "
Holy summarization, Batman! (Score:5, Interesting)
You'd think this would be a great time to use that "read more" snip feature that's typical of reviews and interviews... or maybe this is a cue to start using Larry Drebes's signature everywhere?
At any rate, it's a little sad to see this OpenID provider going because it means less diversity in the single sign-on landscape, which is the whole point. At least OpenID itself will still be around!
Sincerely,
Larry
—
Larry Drebes, CEO, Janrain, Inc.
Re:Holy summarization, Batman! (Score:5, Insightful)
Also means you can look forward to identifying yourself through the services of a company known to track your information for marketing and other purposes.
Yay. :-|
Re:Holy summarization, Batman! (Score:4, Insightful)
It also means that since those networks generally don't let us log onto their networks using OpenID, we're stuck keeping track of which identity/account we used to log into each other website -- "let's see, did I use my user1 Gmail account, or was it the user2 Yahoo account, or maybe Facebook or...man, hope it wasn't site/service X, Y or Z because those don't even exist anymore...maybe I used Discus that time..."
Especially as the big commercial data-mining services don't let us set up multiple identities/personal info/userpics so we can use whichever seems the most appropriate. (Yeah, what a shock...not.) I liked being able to control whether I'm "seatofmypants" or "[insert real name]" or something else entirely, not having Google decide (as it does on all of its connected properties, pissing me off) that I *must* be known by my supposed real name, not the one I actually chose to suit my personality or life.
FWIW I use MyOpenID a couple of times each month, and haven't run into server problems.
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No need to summarize. This is the total extent of the details available.
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However, while it's not written in TFS, there may be another reason while myOpenID was not that popular: reliability?
It is rather annoying when one cannot login to a bunch of sites because myOpenID is unreachable...
Re:Holy summarization, Batman! (Score:4, Informative)
Thanks Larry for providing a service I've been using for a long time. However, while it's not written in TFS, there may be another reason while myOpenID was not that popular: reliability? It is rather annoying when one cannot login to a bunch of sites because myOpenID is unreachable...
A thousand times THIS.
My first and only experiences with MyOpenID was for authenticating to StackExchange, but it was quite possibly one of the buggiest and most unreliable services I ever had the displeasure to use. It was nearly a laugh but really a cry. I switched and never looked back. I certainly am not surprised nor am I crying a river over their demise.
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indeed, they say the quality of slashdot editorial is going down....
I liked myopenid as it didn't require me to have an account with the same people I used service providers (ie I keep my identity and my stuff-I-read separate). Now I guess I'll have to go with my Google account for even more stuff and have Google track me even more easily.
I would have preferred the MyOpenID to be handed over to the community 'under new management' or similar instead of being closed. I'm having difficulty in finding a decent
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I barely use it, but there is OpenId Delegation, which allows you to use your own domain but delegate the authentication part to someone else.
I have this:
<link rel='openid.server' href='http://www.myopenid.com/server'/>
<link rel='openid.delegate' href='http://MYNAME.myopenid.com/'/>
<meta http-equiv='X-XRDS-Location' content='http://MYNAME.myopenid.com/xrds'/>
on the root page of my domain, so my OpenId is http://mydomain/ [mydomain].
Hopefully I'll be able to delegate to someone else (or run the OpenId
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If you go to the OpenID site and try to sign up for an account you'll see that it's very much used...
Still little known though...
Re:News For Nerds, Indeed... (Score:5, Insightful)
A little used system that few people even know about is shutting down.
Sure, but you shouldn't be so judgmental. The same thing has also likely been said of the likes of Usenet, and AltaVista. The same thing might easily be said about Slashdot one day. Those who live in glass houses should not throw rocks at glass houses.
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A little used system that few people even know about is shutting down.
That's why this is News for Nerds, because only Nerds would have even heard of this service.
Verbified (Score:2)
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verbing of nouns is not recommended - it weirds the language
Sincerely,
Larry
—
Larry Drebes, CEO, Janrain, Inc.
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Yes, we must stop the Larrying of language.
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What rock have you been living under? I can assure you that "End of lifed" has been a common software development term for more than a decade. You've probably encountered it as EOL'd and mistakenly thought it meant "end of lined." (Either that or you haven't entered the workforce yet, because if you work for a company that produces software, I guarantee you that your company uses the term.)
Re:Verbified (Score:4, Insightful)
What rock have you been living under? I can assure you that "End of lifed" has been a common software development term for more than a decade. You've probably encountered it as EOL'd and mistakenly thought it meant "end of lined." (Either that or you haven't entered the workforce yet, because if you work for a company that produces software, I guarantee you that your company uses the term.)
Of if you work for any company that owns EOL'ed equipment that you want to keep in service, you'll quickly learn that EOL is a fancy way of saying "Sure, you can buy a service contract for that - but it'll cost you. A lot. So much that you may as well buy a new one."
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(note: details in this post are from memory and may be imperfect)
I remember talking to someone who'd previously worked at a place which designed some kind of control hardware that was used by among others the mining industry.
Unfortunately this hardware was becoming a pain to support, it was a somewhat obsolete design and also had a habit of catching fire from time to time so they wanted to encourage customers to move to newer designs. On the other hand they didn't want to discontinue it and leave customers
Just to be clear (Score:5, Informative)
This isn't the same as OpenID, the one run by the OpenID foundation. This is a random for profit company that I would wager not to many people have heard of. The company is still providing user integration software.
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Well, they are a bit more than 'random for-profit company' in the OpenID world. They are one of the major software contributers and an important figure in the development of its implementation.
Re:Just to be clear (Score:5, Informative)
This isn't the same as OpenID, the one run by the OpenID foundation. This is a random for profit company that I would wager not to many people have heard of. The company is still providing user integration software.
OpenID is an open standard which has been implemented by many sites, one of which is myOpenID. myOpenID was one of the earliest OpenID services. Lots of companies now provide OpenIDs for anyone with an account. However, the overall vision of having one OpenID with which one can log in to all one's online accounts hasn't happened. You can't use your Google account to log in to Facebook or your Microsoft account to log in to Twitter. It's not really surprising janrain is giving up.
I'm a user of it (Score:2)
Created my account in January 2010, used it for a lot of stuff.
Single sign-on turns into single point of failure... again.
I'm sure as hell not going to use Google, Microsoft, Yahoo, LinkedIn, Facebook or whomever for single sign on. I have enough trouble trying to prevent people from sucking me into Google+ and keeping my Youtube account separate from my Gmail account. LinkedIn and Facebook already want to get into my email to "build my social network" further. None of these are trustworthy companies
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Created my account in January 2010, used it for a lot of stuff.
Single sign-on turns into single point of failure... again.
I'm sure as hell not going to use Google, Microsoft, Yahoo, LinkedIn, Facebook or whomever for single sign on. I have enough trouble trying to prevent people from sucking me into Google+ and keeping my Youtube account separate from my Gmail account. LinkedIn and Facebook already want to get into my email to "build my social network" further. None of these are trustworthy companies.
I guess I'm going to have to add a dozen more passwords to my password database.
You're exactly right. When OpenID was getting started, I was quite hopeful that it would prevent lock-in and walled gardens. I used my myOpenID account. I also experimented with Google and Yahoo as providers. I was dismayed that while a number of small web sites were and are OpenID consumers, none of the big ones have allowed that. Eventually, I realized that's simply because it's not in the interest of a company with a large number of users to allow people to use outside accounts to log in. They know they
popular -> slow -> dead (Score:1)
Want to login to some random site? Why not permanently associate that account with your Facebook, Google, Twitter, LinkedIn or Yahoo identity?
Re:popular - slow - dead (Score:3)
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That's why I am very opposed to any chain-of-login service. I Do Not Want Facebook/Google/Twitter/NSA magic logins, and I don't want OpenID magic logins either. Never mind that an independent service like MyOpenID might be a less-onerous way to do follow-me logins, it is still a follow-me login. Don't simplify things for the data miners.
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I'd pay (Score:1)
I'd never user a free one though.
Re:I'd pay (Score:5, Interesting)
The best to have way to do that would be to host your own openID server, in fact I have been looking at setting up an openid server for personal use on my home sever but there don't seem to be many actively maintained standalone and easy to administer openid packages out there. Anyone else on slashdot know of any or have any tips on setting up an openid server?
Re:I'd pay (Score:4, Informative)
Re:I'd pay (Score:4, Interesting)
You don't even need to set up an OpenID server. Set up a url, put the delegate tags [openid.net] to point to some other server that handles all the delegation. When stackoverflow.com [stackoverflow.com] starting using OpenID for authentication, MyOpenID was their recommended provider. I read up a bit before signing up and figured out how to do delegation from my own domain name. Now that OpenID is shutting down, I could set up my own server, but I could also just point the delegate information to another OpenID server, or point it to StackExchange, which has become it's own OpenID provider.
I have thought of doing that but but then openID providers come and go as seen by the subject of this thread. Also I don't want to use others as they can be used by the provider to, effectively, track you web usage. As my goal is to be A) independent of others services and B) to not be tracked on the web using a openid referrer does not mesh with my goals.
Re: I'd pay (Score:3)
Use OpenId delegation pointing to any provider, that way you use your domain but don't need to run any extra software. I used myOpenid before but only this way, I knew something like this could happen, now wait for the day someone forget to renew their domain and all accounts where people used a myOpenid URL and people forgot to switch to another provider could be compromised
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Have a look at SimpleID [koinic.net].
Used google fu to figure out what myOpenID was... (Score:3)
...and this is what I found:
http://stackoverflow.com/questions/5301896/what-are-the-differences-between-openid-and-myopenid [stackoverflow.com]
So my question: If myOpenID is "one of many providers," why does this rate an article of its own? Or am I missing the significance of the event?
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The significance is that myOpenID was the largest and most well-known dedicated OpenID provider*. If it's shutting down, that's arguably the beginning of the end for OpenID in general.
*Many larger companies like Google and Microsoft also acted as providers, but pretty much as an afterthought.
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Yeah, I don't recall a Slashdot story from when getopenid.org shut down a year or two ago...
Lots of people signed up from StackOverflow (Score:3)
If myOpenID is "one of many providers," why does this rate an article of its own?
When StackOverflow first was launched, you could only log in with OpenID I believe. MyOpenID was one of the more prominent providers, and so there are probably a lot of people that if nothing else still use myOpenID to log in to the realm of StackOverflow sites... thus worthy of note on a site like Slashdot in a way that other OpenID providers may not be.
It's good to know, I use it myself for a number of sites - basically whe
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I was looking for the Stackoverflow comment to post my concern* I never cared for openid until I found no other option to sign up and post a question there.
What are we gong to use at Stackoverflow after myopenid croaks? I don't use SO enough to care going there to ask or looking through a faq.
* Slashdot really needs a free-flow forum, because it's annoying having a question you can't ask elsewhere... or risk getting your question closed at the stackexchange sites. I've mulled this over before in another /.
StackExchange has own login now (Score:2)
If you go to your account page, go to "My Logins" tab - there you can add a login with Google, Facebook, Login or many other options. StackExchange itself also has its own auth server so you just just create an account there if you prefer.
I can't remember when it was, but some time ago I believe StackExchange prompted me to move away from only having the OpenID login, so they are basically all ready to go...
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When StackOverflow first was launched, you could only log in with OpenID I believe. MyOpenID was one of the more prominent providers, and so there are probably a lot of people that if nothing else still use myOpenID to log in to the realm of StackOverflow sites...
Correct, and correct. It is the only thing I use OpenID for. StackOverflow is adding a way to have an alternate logon, so you can add one before myOpenID goes under for good.
OpenID is a good enough sounding idea, that is relegated to complete failure by providers. Google, Yahoo, Microsoft and whatever other big account providers do not accept each other's (or any) OpenID; so you are stuck with separate accounts for everything anyhow.
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They roll with the punches (Score:2)
*shrug* (Score:5, Informative)
<link rel="openid.delegate" href="http://anoncoward.myopenid.com/">
<!-- What this says is that this web page in question is owned by the owner of delegate (that is, anoncoward) and furthermore server (the OpenID provider actually) may be used to verify ownership of delegate.-->
<!-- When you wish to change the OpenID provider, you simply change these two lines. At your own website. Thus you don't have to worry about either running your own OpenID server, or having one shutting down on you (as you can easily switch). -->
Embrace and extinguish (anonymity) (Score:3)
"Since that time, social networks and email providers such as Facebook, Google, Twitter, LinkedIn and Yahoo! have embraced open identity standards."
And now these companies by converging on this supposed standard (and other standards such as cellular phone numbers) have effectively extinguished anonymity on the Web. It just goes to show that you Don't have to Be Evil to do evil.
Right now I'm trying to create a new Yahoo email address because some forum requires that I have a real email address, a permanent adresss that they can spam, rather than a throwaway 10-minute email address. But guess what, Yahoo wants me to surrender my cellphone number. For what? So the NSA can add a few more bytes to its data center?
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I agree wholeheartedly -- and try using SpamGourmet for the address. It's ancient, but the vast majority of sites accept it, *no* messages over the limit you set per sub-address (sub1.user@, sub2.user@) can get through, and I've come to like it a lot more than the throwaway services. Otherwise, try using Mailinator with one of their alternate domains; they change those often enough that forums/sites rarely have the latest set of variants blocked yet.
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It is depressing. When I started using the web, an email address was important, but you could post on guestbooks (gasp!) without being forced to give it up. Later, email became your login handle and password reset tool, so you were forced to give it up. Back then it was not so natural to create 4 or 5 addresses, and the mental burden was similar to being asked by a stranger what your cellphone number is.
Now, you're like one question away from needing to give not your home number, but your PERSONAL number. I
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Hotmail wanted a phone, and we were forced to give them THAT
no, wrong. Hotmail wanted a phone number, and I give them that... 08770 123456.
Just like my email address for some places to get past the stupid: a@b.com works every time.
Hotmail least evil?! (Score:2)
I'm not sure. But I wouldn't be surprised. Actually I just managed to create a Hotmail address by providing a disposable email address and answering the trick, I mean security, question.
As a soon-to-be-former Google fan, I find it quite sad that I'd now be recommending Hotmail (aka Live/Outlook) as the least evil service among the Big 3 email providers.
missed opportunity (Score:1)
Should have said you are shutting it down for undisclosed US Government reasons that your lawyer sitting next to you won't let you talk about.
Meh- almost just acknowledgement of status quo (Score:2)
I liked the MyOpenID idea, and don't like the idea of using a Google or Facebook account across the web. But more than half of the time I've tried to log in with MyOpenID over the past two years, the site has been having technical trouble. A login system that does that could cripple your Internet experience. So I ended up moving to other options.
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They should have designed OpenID so that people can run their own identity servers. They sorta did, but it still requires going through a big provider that can track you. That was stupid.
An alternative idea still requires a big provider, but at least logins do not need to go through them so there is no point of tracking you. That idea is to use signed certificate identities. The service you login into only needs to trust the CA that signed your identity.
Or just don't worry about having a like identity,
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...
Running your own openid server is rather simple if you're willing to install some packages.
For fucks sake, a simple google search results in the following first link: http://wiki.openid.net/w/page/12995226/Run%20your%20own%20identity%20server [openid.net]
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...
Running your own openid server is rather simple if you're willing to install some packages.
For fucks sake, a simple google search results in the following first link: http://wiki.openid.net/w/page/12995226/Run%20your%20own%20identity%20server [openid.net]
many of those listed on that page are either no longer actively maintained, hard to administer or requires a web server besides it making it even more work to set up and administer.
No mention of their admin apathy (Score:5, Interesting)
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I received this email earlier today. It made no mention of the fact that generating new SSL certificates for certificate authentication on their website broke years ago, and nobody could be bothered to fix it. It's still broken, in fact. I'm guessing their decision to shut it down was more out of apathy than anything else.
That's the problem with lack of paid Service Level Agreements. More realistically on the www, we reduce that statement to "the problem with free services."
It is good and bad that almost all we do on the web is expected to be free. Even we can't be bothered to stop signing up for services, despite seeing more and more failures:
1) stuff merging / bought by our ideological enemies (almost joined Instagram a month before their Facebook deal)
2) stuff shut down with no warning (remember WHquestion a whole decade
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