Too much Information?
27. September 2007 – 01:50 bySun Microsystems and Orange have become OpenID providers and those announcements have been applauded by many people (including myself). Though I wonder if users were revealing too much information by using an OpenID by those providers.
An OpenID by Sun means that the user is a Sun employee whereas people using an Orange one reveal that the company is also their mobile phone provider. There are probably worse things in life than being a Sun employee or being a customer of Orange, but do users want other people to know about it? I think it is a good idea to get at least another OpenID by a more neutral provider so people can use different OpenID’s for business and private sites.
Though I have to acknowledge that Sun doesn’t force its employees to use their real names for their OpenID’s, also non-Sun email addresses are allowed. So a relying party just knows that a Sun employee is logging in to its service but it can’t tell if it’s Jonathan Schwartz or John Doe.
Maybe those concerns won’t matter in real life because either hardly anyone will use their OpenID’s or people will learn rather quickly to use OpenID the same way they use email. There are not many people who have just one email address, right?
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