New Persona Beta: Millions of Users Ready to Log In using Any Browser

> I don't understand why it doesn't have more mindshare.

Because all they've published so far is API specs and fluffy PR sites that try to portray it as "oh so much better" without offering any insight about why it is better. They can claim "more privacy" all day long, but without any details about what gets stored where and why it is supposed to be safer, they don't make a compelling case.

Look at this page for example: https://login.persona.org/about (the "how it works" page) - it has 0 details about these claims and unfortunately, we're already tired of reading how Google and FB respect our privacy. From "outside", it looks like we need to give Mozilla our (existing) credentials and trust them to handle them with care. Why should we? I feel safer making pwgen passwords for every new site I need to register at.

Can I associate additional data to my profile? A lot of websites I use want to know my name, nickname, age, avatar-pic, timezone, etc. It would be nice if I could store it all with my Persona account and selectively allow access to sites that request it. I could even store my credit card info, and when the site wants me to fill in my address and such, I just click to allow access to that data, which can then autofill the forms.

I could even add things like have browsing preference data like "prefers-dark-on-light-theme", "no-video-or-audio-autoplay", or "no-nsfw-content". The site can add functionality for these preferences if it chooses to. Does Persona already have this?

One major difference is that if you log in to a site with Facebook then Facebook knows you logged in to the site.

Whereas if you log in to a site with Persona, that's between you, your browser, and the site. Mozilla is not pinged with any details about you in the process.

Furthermore, Persona is decentralized. Anyone can run an identity server (though sites don't have to trust all servers, obviously). So you do not in fact have to build an account with anyone new if your mail server deploys Persona and sites trust it to identify people. The article points out the Yahoo has rolled this out already, so anyone with an @yahoo.com mail doesn't have to do any new account-building.

Doesn't that lead to the problem of having to have multiple identities again?

ATM, I have a FB account that I can use to log in to some sites, a Twitter account, a Google account, a Yahoo account, etc.

With potentially everyone being able to be an Identity Provider, what happens if a site recognizes some providers, but not others? Does Persona ensure that, regardless of Provider, I can use one login on all sites?

Furthermore, how does it protect me from the site gathering and aggregating all kinds of information about me (which, admittedly, they probably already have)? There's usually one overarching, way-behind-the-scenes entity handling the data aggregation for many sites (ie., Facebook) which leads us right back to where we are now.

Or is that part not addressed by this solution?

I have to say that I'm really loving Mozilla/Mozilla Research these days. Their heart is in the right place, and their research projects like Asm.js, Persona, Rust, and Firefox OS are very cool. They are what Google was in 2005.