OpenID, Paypal and Ebay
Say hello to the Vasco Digipass Go 3 as brought to you by Ebay/Paypal. I got mine a month or so ago, if you have an account you’ve probably been offered one for five bucks and wondered what it’s for. You still have your account password, but the token adds two-factor authentication. “Something you have, something you know” is the mnemonic for it.
Having a new toy, I of course looked around for more ways to use it. This article lead me to OpenID, which might also be useful for a work project. (SAML, Shibboleth, OpenID, InCommon, etc, etc… yeesh. No simple answers here.)
Anyway, the page pointed out that Verisign is also a Personal Identity Provider, so if you sign up with them you can activate the token on your account and have a two-factor-authenticated OpenID!
I did, it works, and once I tested it out I got that geeky look of satisfaction that non-geeks don’t get. So now I’m looking into OpenID for Wordpress; I may try and setup this blog for OpenID accounts. Seems like it might be fun…
I’d recommend getting one from Ebay. Five bucks is a loss leader for them, these suckers are usually $50+ plus annual fees. Not to mention not having your ebay account hijacked to scam people, or your Paypal cleaned out. Unless you lose the token, this pretty much stops that cold. Cool stuff.
