Persona Beta 2—identiy bridging solution—released by Mozilla

(Phys.org) —Mozilla has released the second beta of its "Persona" identity bridging solution—offering users the possibility of a single login (e-mail address) and password for all of the sites they visit, or so the company claims.

Over time as Internet use has grown by a worldwide user community, the problem of maintaining multiple user accounts on various sites has grown to the extent that companies have now started creating solutions to solve the problem. Facebook Connect, and Google+ Sign-In are two prime examples—both allow users to sign in to websites users their respective web e-mail account information. But, both come with a caveat—using their bridging solutions means granting the respective host interactive rights with the website the user is trying to access. This, representatives at Mozilla say, is not something that users want—especially egregious is that it also allows the hosting site to track user activity across the Internet. Persona, they say, does neither and thus is a better choice for users.

The problem of multiple accounts has arisen as more websites have begun requiring users to log in to use their services. Such websites typically allow a user to pick a login name and password of their choosing and then use that information to track the user's activity on their site. The problem comes in as users choose different login names or passwords for different sites and then have to remember them when it comes time to access the site. A better approach, bridging solution providers say, is for users to create a single account with a single source site, and then use that same login name and password to create user accounts on other web sites. In such cases, the norm is for the bridge service to use the web e-mail address as the login name. Thus, to log in to other websites that work with the bridge service, the user need only type in their e-mail address and the same password they use for that e-mail provider.

In the case of Persona, Mozilla has forged a relationship with Yahoo—users can log into sites that support Persona using their regular Yahoo e-mail address and password. Mozilla reps outline all the security precautions they've put in place to ensure that hackers can't access the stored e-mail addresses and passwords, but still don't have an answer for users who want to know what happens if someone steals their password some other way and then finds that all of the websites they visit have been compromised en masse.

© 2013 Phys.org