AOL & OpenID - Status Update | dev.aol.com

It's been a long time since we started saying we are going to support 3rd party OpenID logins into AOL Web Properties. I am sure everyone would be thinking what's going on (apart from a few who might have accidentally seen the OpenID login tab on AOL Account Management Site :-) ). So here is the scoop. We did finish the infrastructure work on the AOL login side, required to support 3rd party OpenID users to login into AOL, but being a pretty big company, we are struggling to get our Product teams to support it. But they are as usual busy implementing cool new features and functionality into their products that they haven't yet experimented with OpenID support yet via OpenAuth and internal AOL Authentication System (called Screen Name Service). Since the AOL Account Management site is something in our control, we went ahead and added OpenID support to it - even though user's cannot really do anything in there apart from changing their profile information.

We currently support OpenIDs from the following OpenID providers:

myopenid.com
claimid.com
livejournal.com
verisignlabs.com
myvauthid.com
openid.sun.com
myvidoop.com
signon.com (*)
idtail.com (*)
xlogon.net (*)
idproxy.net (**)
typekey.com (**)
sxipper.com (**)
alwaysknownas.com (**)
myID.net (***)

(* - added to the whitelist on 8/16 ** - added to the whitelist on 8/20 *** - added to whitelist on 10/30)

We are open to accept OpenIDs from other providers too - so please contact us via AOL Developer Site with your information.

There has been no change to the AOL OpenIDs, all AOL/AIM users can still use their AOL ScreenNames as their OpenID (http://openid.aol.com/<screenname>).

We will soon update the OpenAuth documentation with some new changes. Here is a quick list of some of them (already implemented and deployed on our production servers):

You can request OpenAuth login page to show AOL, ICQ and OpenID login forms as required (anyone of them or combination of them or all)
New mini version of Login page that would fit on mobile browsers

OpenAuth Login page is now iPhone compatible too !

OpenID Relying Party support, so Web-Apps integrating with OpenAuth do not need to worry about implementing multiple protocols.

We will let you know as soon as we an AOL Service that starts accepting 3rd Party OpenIDs - well apart from ficlets.com and circavie.com, which already support OpenIDs but without using OpenAuth.

Level of integration?

Submitted by markdeveloper on August 22, 2007 - 12:26am.

I'm unsure of how far the OpenID goes.

If I log on to a non-AOL website with, let's say, my id from signon.com. Next I surf to an AOL website. Will the AOL website automatically pickup on my OpenID identity?

- Mark

No - in OpenID world, the

Submitted by alavillipraveen on August 22, 2007 - 7:23am.

No - in OpenID world, the users has to always explicitly enter what his OpenID is. So even though you don't need to enter your password on signon.com, you still have to enter your signon.com OpenID in the AOL login page. This is was designed in this way to provide more control to the user around when and where his Identity is being used.

There are some browser plugins coming out like Verisign Seatbelt and GreaseMonkey scripts that can assist users in pre-filling their OpenID in the OpenID login pages. Btw, if you happen to download Verisign Seatbelt, the AOL Identity Provider url you would need to enter is "https://api.screenname.aol.com/auth".

one request

Submitted by atomic1fire on August 16, 2007 - 5:57pm.

could you guys support idproxy and typekey?

yes - will be added on

Submitted by alavillipraveen on August 17, 2007 - 10:39am.

yes - will be added on monday (8/20). Thanks for pointing it out. We are also going to add sxipper and AlwaysKnownAs.com Providers.

Topic Centers

AOL & OpenID - Status Update

Level of integration?

No - in OpenID world, the

one request

yes - will be added on