Identifier portability: the fundamental issue

[Josh Hoyt]

On 10/16/06, Marius Scurtescu <marius at sxip.com> wrote:
> In this case you are better off opening a separate account with this
> or some other IdP. The current delegation model will not protect you
> at all. The delegate tag is in a publicly accessible Yadis document.
>
> I agree that anonymity is an important feature, but the current
> solution gives you only a false sense of security.

What's "the current solution" that you're talking about? As far as I
know, no one is suggesting portable identifiers as a way to achieve
anonymity. I also do not think anyone is suggesting that IdP-driven
identifier selection will make you anonymous *to the IdP.*

You are correct that in order to avoid anyone knowing the identifiers
that you use, you have to have separate accounts on different IdPs. I
can't come up with any way that the protocol can help (or impede!) the
user with achieving this.

Josh