Tag: OpenID

Facebook’s OpenID integration is not very useful!

Is facebook paying lip-service to OpenId integration?

Preamble:

I don’t know a damn thing about OpenID and less about web applications, but I do know a thing about security, authentication and the like. And, I am a facebook user and like most other internet consumers in this day and age, I am not thrilled that I have to remember a whole bunch of different user names and passwords for each and every online location that I visit.

Facebook’s OpenID integration

Once, and for one last time, you login to facebook with your existing credentials. Let’s say that is your username <joe@joeblow.com> and then you go over to Settings and create your OpenID as a Linked Account. In the interests of full disclosure, I am still working with Gary Krall of Verisign who posted a comment on my previous post describing problems with this linking process. I am sure that we will get that squared away and I can get the linking to work.

Once this linkage is created, a cookie is deposited on your machine indicating that authentication is by OpenID. You wake up in the morning, power up your PC and launch your browser and login to your OpenID provider, and in a second tab, you wander over to http://www.facebook.com.

The way it is supposed work is this, something looks at the OpenID cookie deposited earlier and uses that to perform your validation.

Are you nuts?

As I said earlier, I don’t know a lot about building Web Applications. But, methinks the sensible way to do this is a little different from the way facebook is doing things.

Look, for example, at news.ycombinator.com. On the login screen, below the boxes for username and password is a button for other authentication mechanisms. If you click that, you can enter your OpenID URL and voila, you are on your way. No permanent cookies involved.

Now, if you didn’t have your morning Joe, and you went directly to news.ycombinator.com and tried to enter your OpenID name, you are promptly forwarded to your OpenID providers page to ask for authentication. Over, end of story. No permanent cookies involved.

Ok, just to verify, I did this …

I went to a friends PC, never used it before, pointed his browser (firefox) to news.ycombinator.com, clicked the button under login/password, entered my OpenID name and sure enough it vectored over to Verisign Labs. I logged in and voila, I’m on Hacker News.

Am I missing something? It sounds to me like facebook is paying lip service to OpenID. Either that or they just don’t get it?

OpenID first impressions

I have been meaning to try OpenID for some time now and I just noticed that they were doing a free TFA (what they call VIP Credentials) thing for mobile devices so I decided to give it a shot.

I picked Verisign’s OpenID offering; in the past I had a certificate (document signing) from Verisign and I liked the whole process so I guess that tipped the scales in Verisign’s favor.

The registration was a piece of cake, downloading the credential generator to my phone and linking it to my account was a breeze. They offer a File Vault (2GB) free with every account (Hey Google, did you hear that?) and I gave that a shot.

I created a second OpenID and linked it to the same mobile credential generator (very cool). Then I figured out what to do if my cell phone (and mobile credential generator were to be lost or misplaced), it was all very easy. Seemed too good to be true!

And, it was.

Facebook allows one to use an external ID for authentication. Go to Account Settings and Linked Accounts and you can setup the linkage. Cool, let’s give that a shot!

Facebook OpenID failure
Facebook OpenID failure

So much for that. I have an OpenID, anyone have a site I could use it on?

Oh yes! I could login to Verisignlabs with my OpenID 🙂

Update:

I tried to link my existing “Hacker News” (news.ycombinator.com) account with OpenID and after authenticating with verisign, I got to a page that asked me to enter my HN information which I did.

I ended up with a page: http://news.ycombinator.com/openid_merge and a single word “Unknown” on the screen.

I’ve got to be doing something wrong. Someone care to tell me how badly messed up I am?

Update (sept 11)

Thanks to help from Gary (who commented on this post), I tried the “linking” on Facebook again and this time it worked a little better.

But, I still have to enter my password when I want to login to facebook. Something is still not working the way it should.

Still the same issue with Hacker News.