If you are a fan of trying out new Web services and applications, you probably have more passwords than you could ever try to remember. In an effort to make remembering our logins easier, we are all guilty of using the same usernames and passwords over and over for convenience, but it creates a security issue. If someone gains access to one of your accounts, they may be able to take that login information and figure out your login information for other sites.
Mozilla knows that it is hard to remember and maintain a multitude of user credentials, so they’ve created BrowserID, which uses your email address as your login. Mozilla’s BrowserID has the potential to replace all of your login credentials, because they know that it’s much easier to remember your email address than it is to remember a different login for every site you visit.
What is BrowserID and How to Use it
- The BrowserID concept is really simple. If a website is BrowserID enabled, when you try to log in, you will receive a BrowserID login prompt. If you have not already signed up for BrowserID, click the Don’t have a BrowserID yet link.
- BrowserID will prompt you to enter your email address and create a password. Once you’ve done that, click Continue. Make sure to create a complex password that will help keep your account secure.
- BrowserID will automatically send a confirmation email to the email address you supplied.
- When you receive the confirmation email, click on the BrowserID confirmation link.
- Once you’ve clicked on the confirmation email, BrowserID knows that you are the owner of the email account, and will allow you to use these new credentials to log into the site. Click Continue.
- You can use BrowserID with more than one email address, so when you attempt to log in, BrowserID asks you to choose the email address you want to use. Click the radio button next to the email address you want to log in with, and then click the Sign In button.
- When you are done, BrowserID signs you into the site.
Final Thoughts:
BrowserID will undoubtedly make life easier for those of us who have a lot of website credentials to remember, and also make life easier for website administrators who manage all of those logins. Once you’ve added all of your email addresses and confirmed them with BrowserID, you can just choose the address you want to login with instead of trying one of your 20 or 30 username and password combinations.
If webmasters are eager to embrace BrowserID to make logging in easier for their visitors, and if implementation is not difficult, it will not be very long before the service gains traction and starts appearing on sites you already frequent.
Check out BrowserID Project by Mozilla.
