Category Archives: identity

getting web sites to adopt a new identity system

Posted on April 30, 2013 by ben

My team at Mozilla works on Persona, an easy and secure web login solution. Persona delivers to web sites and apps just the right information for a meaningful login: an email address of the user’s choice. Persona is one of … Continue reading →

Posted in identity, mozilla, web | 3 Comments

Identity Systems: white labeling is a no-go

Posted on April 25, 2013 by ben

There’s a new blog post with some criticism of Mozilla Persona, the easy and secure web login solution that my team works on. The great thing about working in the open at Mozilla is that we get this kind of … Continue reading →

Posted in identity, mozilla, security | 3 Comments

Firefox is the unlocked browser

Posted on March 19, 2013 by ben

Anil Dash is a man after my own heart in his latest post, The Case for User Agent Extremism. Please go read this awesome post: One of my favorite aspects of the infrastructure of the web is that the way … Continue reading →

Posted in identity, mozilla, privacy, web | 4 Comments

the Web is the Platform, and the User is the User

Posted on February 28, 2013 by ben

Mid-2007, I wrote two blog posts — get over it, the web is the platform and the web is the platform [part 2] that turned out to be quite right on one front, and so incredibly wrong on another. Let’s … Continue reading →

Posted in identity, mozilla, web | 7 Comments

connect on your terms

Posted on August 23, 2012 by ben

I want to talk about what we, the Identity Team at Mozilla, are working on. Mozilla makes Firefox, the 2nd most popular browser in the world, and the only major browser built by a non-profit. Mozilla’s mission is to build … Continue reading →

Posted in identity, mozilla, privacy, security, web | Leave a comment

BrowserID and me

Posted on September 21, 2011 by ben

A few weeks ago, I became Tech Lead on Identity and User Data at Mozilla. This is an awesome and challenging responsibility, and I’ve been busy. When I took on this new responsibility, BrowserID was already well under way, so … Continue reading →

Posted in identity, personal, web | Leave a comment

and the laws of physics changed

Posted on July 3, 2011 by ben

Google just introduced Google Plus, their take on social networking. Unsurprisingly, Arvind has one of the first great reviews of its most important feature, Circles. Google Circles effectively let you map all the complexities of real-world privacy into your online … Continue reading →

Posted in identity, privacy, web | 6 Comments

The evolution of OpenID: you’re not a URL after all

Posted on September 9, 2009 by ben

The US government has just announced a pilot program to integrate OpenID (and Information Cards) into public government web sites. This is very interesting news, as it will likely catalyze even greater OpenID deployment and use. [I’ve poo-poo’ed OpenID here … Continue reading →

Posted in identity, privacy, security | 2 Comments

Don’t Hash Secrets

Posted on June 19, 2008 by ben

Building secure systems is difficult. It would be nice if we had a bunch of well-designed crypto building blocks that we could assemble in all sorts of ways and be certain that they would, no matter what, yield a secure … Continue reading →

Posted in crypto, identity, personal, security, web | 26 Comments

Open(Social) Will Win ; and now Privacy?

Posted on November 2, 2007 by ben

If you’re hooked into the social networking world, you know about Facebook and the Facebook platform, which lets developers create all sorts of applications that make use of your Facebook social network in interesting ways. Flixster, for example, lets you … Continue reading →

Posted in identity, privacy, web | 4 Comments