Â
OpenID Q & A
What is OpenID?
OpenID is (per Wikipedia) an open, decentralized user identification standard, allowing users to log onto many services with the same digital identity. OpenID allows you to manage how you want our system to identify you in a way that is safe and secure. OpenID, instead of our system, will control username and password information instead of creating yet another password for our system.
Many different websites support OpenID, and you may already have an OpenID URL if you have registered with other sites.
For more details, please see http://openid.net/ for complete details on OpenId and how to get one.
Can you explain the OpenID a bit more, as the website you've linked to is confusing?
Sure. OpenID is a way for you to manage your own username/password and use it on many different websites. This gives you control over how you manage your identity for connecting to our site, as well as other sites.
When you register and you provide your OpenID, and you try to log in, our software will send your browser to the OpenID URL. Your OpenID site will ask for your password. If you enter it correctly, the OpenID server will tell me you are who you say you are, and you'll get access to our system. If you don't, you won't get in.
Why go to all this trouble? Using OpenID means that Point Blue won't have any of your password information. If you lose your password, the OpenID website will help you. If you like, you can set up the OpenID to be more secure and have it ask extra questions when you log in. All this gives our users lots of flexibility and security for connecting into our online systems.
I'm still not sure how to get an OpenID to send to you.
If you look at this page -- http://openid.net/get/ -- you will see that a number of existing sites already provide an OpenID for you. If you are a frequent user of one of those sites, and already have a password at one, you can use their OpenID (it's differently formatted for each site).
If you don't use those sites or don't want to bother using them, you can easily sign up with the sites listed in the middle of that page.
I've registered at one of the sites listed at the OpenID website. What does my OpenID look like?
An OpenID is a URL. Some examples are:
- https://www.google.com/accounts/o8/id (from Google)
- https://me.yahoo.com/joeschmoe (from Yahoo)
- http://joeschmoe.pip.verisignlabs.com (from Verisign)
- http://joeschmoeblog.blogspot.com (from Blogspot)