Issues with single sign out
Dick Hardt
dick at sxip.com
Tue Nov 7 18:47:08 UTC 2006
implementation issues:
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* clearing session cookies
most application environments set a cookie to manage who the user is
and if she is logged in. The straightforward method for logging a
user out is to clear the cookie. Since cookies are stored on the
browser, the site needs to be interacting directly with the browser
to clear the cookie (some browsers can let you clear cookies in a
different domain, but not all of them). This means bouncing the user
to each RP to get them to clear the cookie, and any of the RPs can
abort the processing by not handing control back to the OP. This
approach also is ugly. There may be a better way to do it, but we did
not think of one, and stopped working on it as we came to the
conclusion that the feature was really not what we wanted in the UX.
user experience issues:
--------------------------------
* differentiating between logging out of the site and logging out of
all OpenID sessions
Having a new link/icon for logging out overloaded users. They were
not sure which thing did which. When clicking [sxip out], they
understood what happened, but wanted to know how to just logout of
the site.
Given all the above, I don't think single sign out is practical or
useful. Happy to be proven wrong though, so if someone wants to write
an extension for single sign out, go for it!
-- Dick
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