A few thoughts about the current de facto authentication 'standard':
1. The majority of my accounts are tied to my email account. Now, I can't easily change email providers; I'm locked in, for the most part.
2. Email is slowly dying and will be mostly extinct before long. Most people under 20 don't use email except for authenticating with web sites. Email was traditionally used for asynchronous one-to-one (or one-to-many, in some cases) communication. But, new services have risen that do this better.
3. The near-ubiquitous rise of mobile and smart phones: although you may not have a phone nearby, my phone is pretty much the only thing that I always have with me or nearby. So, I want sites to authenticate me with my mobile device, not email. I see mobile device (an identity proxy) becoming more ubiquitous, not less.
4. But, sometimes I want to authenticate anonymously.
5. I don't want to have to trust my email provider (or any 3rd-party provider) to safely and privately store my account information.
6. And, if I lose or break my phone, I don't want to lose my identity - I want an easy way to encrypt and store my identity at multiple backup locations.
1. The majority of my accounts are tied to my email account. Now, I can't easily change email providers; I'm locked in, for the most part.
2. Email is slowly dying and will be mostly extinct before long. Most people under 20 don't use email except for authenticating with web sites. Email was traditionally used for asynchronous one-to-one (or one-to-many, in some cases) communication. But, new services have risen that do this better.
3. The near-ubiquitous rise of mobile and smart phones: although you may not have a phone nearby, my phone is pretty much the only thing that I always have with me or nearby. So, I want sites to authenticate me with my mobile device, not email. I see mobile device (an identity proxy) becoming more ubiquitous, not less.
4. But, sometimes I want to authenticate anonymously.
5. I don't want to have to trust my email provider (or any 3rd-party provider) to safely and privately store my account information.
6. And, if I lose or break my phone, I don't want to lose my identity - I want an easy way to encrypt and store my identity at multiple backup locations.