Filed under: Internet, Security, Web services, Social Software
FreeYourID: OpenID for your name
Now that so many sites seem to be adopting OpenID, you might have decided that you want one. You may also have decided that you don't want it tied to your circa 1997 AOL screen name (I'm looking at you cyrano99). What better than to tie your online ID to your real identity and keep things nice and simple? Enter FreeYourID.
The FreeYourID service combines a personal domain in the .name TLD with an OpenID provided by MyOpenID. since your OpenId will be tied to your .name url, it is theoretically good for life--or as long as you keep the DNS registry up to date--rather than your tenure with with AOL, LiveJournal, another service. And since it's based on your name you should have less compunction about using it in a professional context than, say hottl33gs.
In addition to the OpenID, FreeYourID also includes forwarding of both your .name email and url to addresses of your choice.
They're currently running a 90-day free promo, and membership is $10.95 per year after that. If you don't like it, you can transfer your .name domain to another registrar if you want to keep it.
So far, I've stayed away from OpenID, mostly because I haven't wanted to tie my identity to any particular url. The ability to easily combine the ID with a .name domain, though, may be what finally pushes me over the edge. It would certainly make life a lot simpler.
There is one "gotcha," though: I wouldn't use the service for any particularly secure application yet. Passwords can only contain upper and lower case letter and numbers. Attempts to enter punctuation or other characters result in an "invalid character" warning. That seems pretty short-sighted to me.
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Emery Jeffreys said 10:04AM on 3-09-2007
Open ID may be a little simpler. But I believe a public/private key plan works just as well.
However on a Geek scale of 1-10, encryption is probably too complex for the masses.
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hakon said 5:16PM on 3-09-2007
Hi Jay,
good point on the password - we'll make sure to allow a more extended character set in passwords on the FreeYourID.com platform. It will come in in the next update.
Thanks for your article and support.
Best,
Hakon
Global Name Registry
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brandon t said 9:57AM on 5-17-2007
Wouldn't it be a better idea to use the 11 bucks a year that you'd spend on freeyourid.com to register the name for youself, and get complete control over the domain, and save some money. That way you actually get a site in your name, that you can keep forever, have as many email address that you want, actually own a website instead of forwarding to one, and STILL save money??? Why hasn't anyone thought of this? Doesn't this make freeyourid.com a very stupid idea???
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