Windows Live ID Commits to Support OpenID Beginning today, Windows Live™ ID is publicly committing to support the OpenID digital identity framework with the announcement of the public availability of a Community Technology Preview (CTP) of the Windows Live ID OpenID Provider. You will soon be able to use your Windows Live ID account to sign in to any OpenID Web site! The Windows Live ID OpenID Provider (OP) enables anyone with a Windows Live ID account to set up an OpenID alias and to use that alias for identification at an increasing number of OpenID 2.0 relying party sites—for example: Plaxo, Pibb, StackOverflow.com and Wikispaces. What is OpenID? The official answer from the OpenID Foundation (the guardians of the OpenID specs) is that “OpenID is a free and easy way to use a

There will be lots of the great sessions at the the Microsoft Professional Developer Conference (PDC) in October and the Windows Live Platform crew will be there in force to share all the latest goodness we have been working on during the last few months. You can expect some very interesting announcements at PDC that will be of great interest to anyone developing cloud applications.... Jorgen Thelin will be there this year presenting a session about the wealth of Windows Live ID Identity Services functionality that developers can use to enable Windows Live / Live ID services to be integrated into their web sites and applications. Session BB22 - Live Platform: Identity Services The Live Platform enables developers on any platform to choose the identity integration model that best enables their scenarios, including: web or client authentication, delegated authentication, or federated authentication. Learn how to build seamless, co-branded, and customized sign-up and sign-in experiences.

Today the Windows Live™ ID team released the Delegated Authentication SDK v1.0, which provides a platform-neutral way for Web applications to access customers’ information from Windows Live services while customers remain in firm control of their own data. This release is part of a broader announcement of a whole set of releases from the Windows Live Platform team that are described by our boss David Treadwell in his blog posting today. Windows Live Delegated Authentication is a feature that gives Windows Live ID customers the ability to consent to the scoped release of their personal information to particular Web sites in a reliable yet flexible manner. Customers grant (or withhold) consent by means of a straightforward user interface, as shown here: Delegated Authentication is a way to grant access to personal information, but with more precise control over permissions and usage than the current binary decision (that is, fully on or fully off) that comes with the generally bad practice of handing over your account credentials to another Web site. Simultaneously with the debut of Delegated Authentication, the Windows Live Contacts and Windows Live Photos teams have released updates to their services t

Windows Live ID is very committed to the safety of its users. To further protect the users against phishing, Windows Live ID has adopted Extended Validation (EV) SSL Certificates. EV SSL certificates require a company to undergo an extensive vetting process and provide users additional assurance about the identity and authenticity of web sites they visit.  Thus when a user visits Live ID in IE7, the address bar will turn green and the identity of the company that owns the website – in this instance ‘Microsoft Corporation [US]’ – is displayed. You can get more information on EV certificates here. Users of sites (such as Hotmail, Spaces, and Microsoft partner sites) that use Live ID authentication can now enjoy the additional protection and verified identity provided by EV SSL.  Remember that in order to enjoy the additional assurance provided by EV SSL, users will have to use a newer browser that supports EV SSL, such as Internet Explorer 7. Windows Live ID is the first large scale authentication service to adopt EV certificates; our over 380 million users can now enjoy the additional protection offered by EV over 1.2 billion times a day when they login.