In a bid to offer users a more secure, portable, digital identity as they move across the Internet and access web applications, Internet company, Yahoo! Inc., has announced its support for the OpenID 2.0 digital identity framework.

 

The support will make it easier for Yahoo!'s (News - Alert) 248 million active, registered users worldwide to "consolidate their Internet identity" and remove the need to create separate IDs and logins when they visit various other websites, blogs or profile pages.

 

Available in public beta on January 30, Yahoo!'s support for OpenID 2.0 will also make it possible for users with a Yahoo! ID to access any other website also supporting OpenID 2.0 with their Yahoo! ID. According to a news release, Yahoo! is working with several partners, including Plaxo and JanRain, to make it possible for users to access these sites with their Yahoo! ID from the first day of the public beta.

"Yahoo!'s commitment to an open web is a significant validation of the OpenID movement and Yahoo!'s adoption of the standard today immediately triples the total number of people able to use OpenID," said Scott Kveton, chairman of the Board of Directors for the OpenID Foundation in a statement to the press.

 

"With Yahoo! actively engaged with the OpenID Foundation and its community to promote OpenID, Yahoo!'s users will be able to more easily access the many sites across the web that support the standard, and the potential for access to Yahoo!'s vast international user base will create an even more powerful incentive for additional websites to begin accepting OpenID users."

 

Yahoo! based their OpenID 2.0 implementation OpenID 2.0 specifications and worked closely with the OpenID foundation and community to finalize it in December 2007.

 

The implementation also features improved usability and security, as Yahoo! users who log in with their Yahoo! ID on OpenID sites will be protected by Yahoo!'s sign-in seal wherever they go on the web. Also, no email or IM addresses are revealed or disclosed as part of the login process.

 

"A Yahoo! ID is one of the most recognizable and useful accounts to have on the Internet and with our support of OpenID, it will become even more powerful," said Ash Patel, executive vice president of platforms and infrastructure at Yahoo!. "Supporting OpenID gives our users the freedom to leverage their Yahoo! ID both on and off the Yahoo! network, reducing the number of usernames and passwords they need to remember and offering a single, trusted partner for managing their online identity."