Over 25 000 websites - and growing!

OpenID is a decentralized, lightweight protocol for single sign-on and portable identity which is making the complexity with several different accounts on the Internet a lot easier. More than 25 000 Web sites currently accept OpenID, with double digit month over month growth. Many of the world's leading companies, including Facebook, AOL, Yahoo!, MySpace, Google Blogger, have adopted or announced support for OpenID enabling over 500 million users.

This Open Source technology lets you use your existing presence on the web as a form of identity. Just like you can use an email address as a form of identity, OpenID lets you use a web address (URL) that you control to sign in on other sites. And just like email addresses, you can have more than one, for work, or at home, or for any other use. But unlike email, the sites you access can't spam you or access your data unless you give them permission.

An OpenID is a URL. An example OpenID URL would be "mobileopenid.com/anna", and when asked to sign in to an OpenID-enabled site I would type "mobileopenid.com/anna" into the sign in box.