Yahoo! Signs Into OpenID

By Michael Santo
Executive Editor, RealTechNews

If you’re like me, you have an OpenID, but rarely use it, mostly because there are few sites I visit on a regular basis that use it, and those that do generally “remember me.” Today Yahoo! announced it has joined OpenID, in one fell swoop legitimizing it as a universal Internet login method, as well as tripling the number of OpenID accounts.

Prior to today there were roughtly 120 million OpenID accounts; Yahoo! has 248 million user IDs according to its press release.

The service goes live (in beta form, naturally) on January 30th. Besides using their Yahoo! user ID at me.yahoo.com, users can also simply type in “www.yahoo.com” or “www.flickr.com” on any site that supports OpenID 2.0. Additionally, web sites using OpenID 2.0 will be able to add a”Sign-in with Your Yahoo! ID” button to their login pages.

BTW, you can see the list of sites currently supporting OpenID here. Since Yahoo! hasn’t gone live yet, it’s not there (in case you are wondering).

Of course, while this is wonderful convenience for users, if your ID is compromised for some reason, it’s compromised everyone that supports OpenID. For someone that’s had their ID stolen (in a non-Internet way), that’s always going to be a concern.

I’m likely to continue using Roboform and multiple strong passwords for some time to come.