MyOpenID.com supports Information Cards

If you use OpenID, you are propably running software developed by the gang of “Internet ninjas” at JanRain (yes, I've been there, and they actually do all wear black silk kung “foo” robes).  Besides writing software, JanRain runs one of the largest independent OpenID services: MyOpenID.com.  Today Jan Rain's Kevin Fox announced they had reached a major milestone:

The JanRain OpenID team is pleased to announce Information Card support has been added to MyOpenID.com

What is an Information Card?

What can I do with it? With a self-issued Information Card you can sign-in to MyOpenID, as well as sign-up and recover your account, without ever having to enter your password. Anywhere on MyOpenID that you can enter a password will now allow you to use an Information Card instead. With the addition of Information Card support MyOpenID is able to offer another solid option for people wanting to protect their OpenID account from phishing attacks and remember fewer passwords.

We were able to work with Microsoft’s Mike Jones and Kim Cameron who have both been long time proponents of OpenID  + Information Card support.

As noted by Kim Cameron “Cardspace is used at the identity provider to keep credentials from being stolen. So the best aspects of OpenID are retained.” While one of the less desirable aspects (confusing user experience) has been improved for someone using an  Information Card to login to their OpenID provider.

Support for Information Cards has been growing as more software projects implement the technology. It is important to note that this technology is being supported by many other organizations besides Microsoft. Information Card support is available for Windows platforms (Vista / XP) as well as Mac OS X and Linux.

Mike Jones beat me to the punch in heaping well-deserved praise on the Jan Rain group:

The JanRain team has done a fantastic job integrating account sign-up, sign-in, and recovery via Information Cards into their OpenID provider. I’m really impressed by how well this fits into the rest of their high-quality offering.

There’s another kind of integration they also did that makes this even more impressive in my mind: connecting their new Information Card support with their existing support for the draft OpenID phishing-resistant authentication specification. This is another significant step in fulfilling the promise of the JanRain/Microsoft/Sxip Identity/VeriSign OpenID/Windows CardSpace collaboration announcement introduced by Bill Gates and Craig Mundie at the RSA Security Conference this year. Because of this work, this sequence is now possible:

1. A person goes to an OpenID relying party and uses an OpenID from MyOpenID.com.
2. The OpenID relying party requests that MyOpenID.com use a phishing-resistant authentication method to sign the user in.
3. The person signs into his MyOpenID.com OpenID with an Information Card.
4. MyOpenID.com informs the relying party that the user utilized a phishing-resistant authentication method.

This means that MyOpenID users will be able to get both the convenience and anti-phishing benefits of Information Cards at OpenID-enabled sites they visit and those sites can have higher confidence that the user is in control of the OpenID used at the site. That’s truly useful identity convergence if you ask me!

Congratulations to all.