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Asked: 2026-05-10T14:17:23+00:00

I’m curious about OpenID. While I agree that the idea of unified credentials is

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I’m curious about OpenID. While I agree that the idea of unified credentials is great, I have a few reservations. What is to prevent an OpenID provider from going crazy and holding the OpenID accounts they have hostage until you pay $n? If I decide I don’t like the provider I’m with this there a way to migrate to a different provider with out losing all my information at various sites?

Edit: I feel like my question is being misunderstood. It has been said that I can simple create a delegation and this is partially true. I can do this if I haven’t already created an account at, for example, SO. If I decide to set up my own OpenID provider at some point, there is no way that I can see to move and keep my account information. That is the sort of think I was wondering about.

Second Edit: I see that there is a uservoice about adding this to SO. Link

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  1. This is why you can use OpenID delegation, i.e. you set up two META tags on your personal website and then you can use that site’s URL as an alias for your current OpenID provider of choice. Should it get unfriendly you just switch to another and update your tags.

    Additionally you can always operate your own OpenID identity provider (if you have a server with, for example, a web server and PHP on it). I use phpMyID for this.

    Update: regarding the updated question: OpenID consumers (sites where you log in using OpenID) may allow you to switch the OpenID used for sign-on at their discretion. Sourceforge, for example, does. To prevent problems it’s best to use delegation right from the start. Otherwise this is a necessary limitation imposed by OpenID’s design.

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