[OpenID] Combining Google & Yahoo user experience research

[SitG Admin]

At 12:28 PM -0400 10/19/08, Brandon Ramirez wrote:
>When a person identifies themselves, we need some element of trust 
>(if we're in person and we've met them before, our memory provides 
>that trust, if not, a photo ID , etc.).

What is our memory recalling? Not trust, but an assurance that the 
face we're seeing now is a face we've seen before (associated with 
that identity). What is the photo ID providing? Not trust, but an 
assertion that it represents the trust someone else has placed in 
that face going with that identity. Neither of these offer ANY 
protection against someone imitating the face. Where is the trust 
here?

At 12:45 PM -0400 10/19/08, Brandon Ramirez wrote:
>So it's great security if you need very little security?

It would be ironic if the steadily reducing levels of security in 
modern banking (and other areas where transactions of "real" value 
take place) suddenly thrust OpenID into the spotlight when everything 
else dropped *below* its level :D

At 11:38 PM -0400 10/19/08, Brandon Ramirez wrote:
>Financial transactions needs to actually authenticate a living 
>person, and that is impossible to do without an established trust 
>model.

How do trust models *become* established? I mean, at some point, each 
of them must have been *not* established, right? They didn't exist 
from the dawn of all time ;)

-Shade