---- Original Message -----
From: "Marc A. Pelletier"
<marc(a)uberbox.org>
On 02/22/2013 10:43 PM, Jay Ashworth wrote:
So, then, all OpenID guarantees is "this
provider says it's the same
person it was last time"?
The exact semantics is, IIRC, "that person has presented credential to
us we accept as identifying them as our user $IDENTIFIER". Whether the
client trusts that $IDENTIFIER is reasonably stable for their
purposes, or that they trust our word, is their call.
I'm translating that as "yes". :-)
I've always looked with rather a jaundiced eye at OpenID, as it was sold
as "you can run your own authenticator service", and that always struck me
as "I am who I say I am", which is, obviously, pretty useless, in the
general case. (Early examples showed login boxes where you *provided
the URL of a random OID provider*; clearly, if the site doesn't trust
said provider, the transaction is useless.)
Cheers,
-- jra
--
While that depends on your use case. In many situations it is the user's
(and only the user's) problem if the oid provider is untrustworthy. It then
becomes the users responsibility to pick a good oid provider. ( giving
users security responsibilities - because that has never gone wrong ;).
That said, in many ways no different from normal passwords: Users arent
supposed to share passwords - users aren't supposed to pick oid providers
they don't trust.
What ive always wondered is what happens if your oid provider goes
under/otherwise dissapears. I imagine that means you lose your user account
all across the internet, which is a scary thought
-bawolff