Mozilla Persona to the login rescue?

Matt Watson
Matt Watson · CEO of Full Scale, 4x Founder, Author of Product Driven
October 2, 2012 · 1 min read

A lot of websites now allow us to login or create accounts via OAuth or OpenID. We can use our Facebook, Twitter, Google, Windows Live account and others. The problem with a lot of these is we have to have allow the websites to then have access to our account and profile data that they shouldn't really have. 

Below is a Twitter authorization screen for example when signing in via Technorati. Now Technorati can follow new people, update my profile and post tweets? All I wanted to do was login to Technorati.com to comment on a post!

!

Mozilla has just released their new solution for this called. First thought is oh great another solution! But they are actually providing something a little different and better. It is based on an email address and isn't linked to anything like our personal social networks or their information. Persona only exists to help with logging in to websites. No loose strings attached.

Persona is based on a new standard called BrowserID and you can read more about it here:

How BrowserID Works.  The goal is to integrate BrowserID in to the browser at a deeper level so no password entry is required at all. You can tell your web browser to just auto sign in for you. I am really hoping this takes off and will look at implementing it in current projects! I would recommend researching it and lets hope it or something like it becomes a wide spread reality in the future.

Matt Watson

Matt Watson

CEO of Full Scale, 4x Founder, Author of Product Driven

Matt Watson is a serial software entrepreneur based in Kansas City and the founder and CEO of Full Scale, which helps companies build offshore development teams fast. He previously founded Stackify, a developer-tools startup, and was an early CTO at VinSolutions. He's the author of Product Driven and hosts the Startup Hustle podcast.

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