[OpenID] PR: OpenID.co.uk - "MobileNumber.OpenID.co.uk" as URI

Allen Tom atom at yahoo-inc.com
Wed Feb 7 20:47:19 UTC 2007


I really believe that it is not a good idea to encourage people to use 
personal contact infomation as their OpenIDs, which applies to both 
phone number and email/IM based IDs. The reason is that spammers and 
griefers will make life unbearable for people using these IDs.

The user's OpenID will invariably be displayed at many RPs, and if the 
user's contact information could be easily determined by the OpenID, it 
would just be a matter of time before OpenID gets a bad rep for 
attracting spam, and everyone switches back to disposable IDs again, or 
abandons OpenID altogether.

This is the same argument as to why it is not a good idea to post your 
email address, IM screenname, or phone number online, especially if its 
on some random RP that you're not all that familar with.

For OpenID to succeed, it is very important that the early adopters 
think very carefully about these issues, or else OpenID could develop a 
poor reputation,  preventing its widespread adoption.

Allen



Chris Messina wrote:
> Perhaps the better way to think about this is as a personal OpenID
> alias? So rather than publishing it all over the place, an iDP might
> offer "phone number aliasing" to help people remember their openids...
> So say I sign up on JanRain and add my phone number -- which is
> confirmed by SMS or callback code system... Perhaps I could then use
> [phonenumber].myopenid.com to login... Just a thought.
>
> Chris
>
> On 2/7/07, Allen Tom <atom at yahoo-inc.com> wrote:
>> Hi Mark,
>>
>> Exposing one's phone number might not be a good idea for everyone, as
>> griefers and stalkers would have an easy way to harass people who had
>> phone number based IDs.
>>
>> Also, what happens if and when a phone number is recycled?
>>
>> Allen
>>
>>
>> sites at thirdvisit.co.uk wrote:
>> > Hi,
>> >
>> > Shameless plug:
>> >
>> > http://www.openid.co.uk
>> >
>> > Please visit and digg if you like it!
>> >
>> > Cheers Mark
>> > _______________________________________________
>> > general mailing list
>> > general at openid.net
>> > http://openid.net/mailman/listinfo/general
>> >
>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> general mailing list
>> general at openid.net
>> http://openid.net/mailman/listinfo/general
>>
>
>




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