In an e-mail to its user base and with a short notice on its main website, FreeYourID has announced that it will be shutting down its service after nearly two years and a half in business. After August 15, the web service will be discontinued without a hint of explanation about the reason for the folding, although we suspect it may have something to do with VeriSign taking over the service’s main backer late last year.
When FreeYourID launched in February 2007, we dubbed it a personalized OpenID, because it allowed users to register a unique .name domain name (e.g. first.last.name) which in turn could be used as a custom, personal OpenID identifier, website URL and e-mail host. The service was the result of a partnership between OpenID company JanRain and Global Name Registry, the domain name registry for the .name extension. Alas for them, it never got any significant traction.
Until August 15, 2009, users will be able to access and use their FreeYourID accounts to make changes to their .name domain names, extend the registration period with a payment or retrieve the authorization code needed to be able to transfer the domain name to another provider. If the domain name isn’t transferred to another party, dotname will transfer all remaining .name domain names to Key-Systems automatically.
The latter will let users who are still interested in the service change the e-mail and URL forwarding settings for their domain names and continue using OpenID.
FreeYourID, however, hits the deadpool.
E-mail in full (hat tip to @pascalvanhecke):
Dear Freeyourid.com user,
We will be discontinuing the Freeyourid.com service, which may affect the way you manage and pay for your .name domain name going forward, on August 15, 2009. Please note that until August 15, 2009, you will continue to be able to access and use your account on Freeyourid.com to make changes to your .name domain name, extend its registration period with a payment, or retrieve your “Transfer Auth Code” so that you can transfer your .name domain name to another provider. The extended registration period will be fully honored by the new provider.
Your .name domain name registration term will continue until its expiry; however, we will transfer your .name to Key-Systems GmbH, an ICANN-accredited registrar who we have selected as the new provider of the .name services (”Key-Systems”). Upon completion of the transfer to Key-Systems, you will receive an email with details on how to activate your new account. With Key-Systems, you will be able to continue to enjoy your .name address, change your email forwarding and web forwarding, use Open ID, and extend the registration of your .name address and email.
Please also note the following:
1. If you do nothing, we will transfer your .name domain to Key-Systems on August 15, 2009. Your username and password will not be transferred. As mentioned above, you will receive an email with a link to activate your new direct account with Key-Systems and to check your preset data. After activation, you will receive a new username and password.
2. If you do not wish for us to transfer your .name domain name to Key-Systems, please click here to log in to your account and let us know. Your .name domain name will then be deleted on the transfer date, allowing you to re-register it with another provider of your choice; however, any remaining time in your registration term will be forfeited and there will be no refunds for time not used. If you select this option, please be aware that someone else could register your .name domain name after it is deleted from our system before you register it directly again with a new .name domain name registrar of your choice. If you intend to keep your .name address, we strongly recommend allow us to transfer it to Key-Systems.
We have genuinely appreciated your use of the FreeYourID service and your .name domain name. We believe Key-Systems will continue to provide you with a positive experience so that you can enjoy of your .name address – your personal, memorable and lifelong address.
As always, thank you for using your .name domain name, we greatly appreciate it.
If you have any questions or concerns please contact VeriSign Customer Support at 703-925-6999 or email us at info@verisign-grs.com.
Sincerely,
PJ Bolanos
Vice President, Global Customer Support
This is the problem with ID services like this — when they go out of business, they take your entire identity management system out of business with them.
As long as you own the domain you can delegate to another openid provider.
yup, talk about hassles and concerns.
i never thought they could really monetize this anyway
Another case study of death due to lack of marketing.
Probably something to do with the new .tel top level domain. Does a bunch of what freeyourid was trying to do.
There are simply too many services and ways to do similar things to what they are doing.
.name
.tel
facebook URL
etc
etc
More like: no one wants their name to be their e-mail/domain, etc. Ya know..privacy and all of that? Bad concept to begin with.
You can see the full home address of every domain owner in the WHOIS record(s). A real name in the domain name sounds more professional. Imagine you write a company where you’d like to work a mail from your John@topsecretname.com
Stupid, isn’t? John@johnarrington.com sounds more professional, I guess…
I know of the so-called “Whois-Privacy-Record” companies… well, it’s simply stupid.
You are no more the official owner of the domain name (cuz Whois-Privacy-Company is) … I know that the companies always say well it will remain your domain name. But ask your NIC… they will do anything the domain owner (company) will say… even transfering or deleting the name.
After browsing Key System’s website, it seem the FreeYourID annual price of $9 or so for personal .name IDs will jump to Key System’s EUR 30 (= $42). Whoopsie…
would you mind linking to the page your found that mentions that?
Will,
from http://www.key-...p?id=33&L=2 you will be pointed to
http://www.doma...domains_pricing
Ridiculous pricing.
If you need a cheap domain name with FULL dns access (in real time) go to
http://www.inwx.de/?lng=en
10 bucks for a REAL .name (john.name and not john.doe.name)
I’m with them for almost 3 years… very happy. And PayPal payments accepted… so domain registration in real time. Domain owner change, transfers etc. all free. Well it should always be free cause the NIC doesn’t charge at all…
I don’t like OpenID anyway. Sure it’s a cool concept but it’s similar to Facebook connect and if I were to choose one of them, I would go with Facebook.
Though, I don’t really care for either because, on many sites, using Facebook connect or OpenID to login automatically creates a username for you which you may not like. I for one, like to use the same username on every site to keep my identity the same across the internet.
I like how Digg lets you choose your own username and then tie it to a Facebook account for easy login.
Geeks like me already have their name as email address, URL and OpenID. Most nongeeks don’t know what OpenID is. BTW: I’d like to use it here, instead of Facebook, like in the Blogger comments.
I am sorry for them!
Are there more service who provides a payable openID? I don’t think that this is business who could work, but I think the future of openID is near.
We are working on yiid – your internet id.
Hi Marco,
Check out EasySecured which offers a Password Less User Authentication without using expensive tokens.
I am founding member of EasySecured which proposes a universal ID solution based on its patent patending EasySecured Technology.
EasySecured ID does not belong to anyone but the user.
There is no EasySecured Server that authenticates the User ID.
The Users computer is the ID authenticator.
There is no need to define a password and users need to just enter their User ID to access their online account.
The password to protect the users account is a unique signature of the users computer which has been derived using a patent pending technology.
IF service providers adopt this technology, then users can benefit enormously as they can use the same user id to access all their accounts without fear of the accounts getting hacked.
Best of all, EasySecured Technology is FREE for general users.
Then you buy a new computer, change a hard drive or network card and you are screwed… Thank you, been there, done that.
Go to Apple, they are fond of this… mmm… obsolete approach.
You change your hardware, you can still access your account using a passkey that you receive at the time of registration and then register the account with the new hardware configuration.
the solution i have proposed does not do what apple proposes or does. the innovativeness of my concept is that the password is not stored anywhere. neither on the client nor the server as is done now be it manually created or automatically generated.
please visit the website of easysecured for more details.
I can never get OpenID to work. I try and try. I go to all the troubleshooting sites. It’s as if each blogging site using it has an add-on or plug-in or something that isn’t compatible? I go re-register, retry, never works.
I have come to experience OpenID as ClosedID.
Eventually someone will work out some kind of ID suitcase we can take around that is authenticated itself, and allows for the creation of accounts from it, with varying levels of personal info revealed with the slider on the customer side. Perhaps this will take government authentication some day, but leaving it in opensource hands isn’t working. That has to be admitted.
Please review EasySecured and maybe you get some ideas there
OpenID was an excellent idea… unfortunately OpenID is so terrible unsecure. What if one hacks the OpenID password? S/he gets access to all the linked accounts. Wonderful. Still wondering, why no one was able to introduce a real high-secure OpenID solution yet. Well, guess it’s too late already anway…
Check out the EasySecured it solves this basic problem…in a simple way.
.name was a really good concept where you don’t have to really on other 3rd party openID urls but your own url.
I’m having a .name there at freeyourid and now I’m wondering where should I transfer it? Key system looks so expansive to me..instead of this .com would be easy and good choice.
I thought that after VeriSign taking over the service Freeyourid will surly show the good progress but it seems that VeriSign not able to pull the people to .name like for other domains.
It moved it openid service from myopenid to it’s own services called “pip” I thought that veriSign also will bundled its VeriSign Identity Protection and digital ids with secured email for individual and make a service more unique and secured.
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