Persona

From IndieWeb


Persona was an email-based authentication service from Mozilla that was supported by IndieAuth for rel-me links to email addresses; it was shut down November 30, 2016.

Previously, Persona was summarized at https://web.archive.org/web/20160123160415/https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/persona/ (original link http://www.mozilla.org/en-US/persona/ is 404 as of 2024)

Persona is based on the BrowserID protocol for authenticating users based on email address

Some fans of Persona have started a "spiritual successor" called Portier.

Past IndieWeb Examples

Past examples of IndieWeb sites which acted as their own Persona provider, without relying on delegation to another email provider, or to the Mozilla default provider.

  • ... add yourself if you have some historical documentation of doing this

Examples of IndieWeb sites which consumed (allowed login via) Persona in particular (beyond using IndieAuth to do so).

  • tommorris.org - although people other than me don't really get to do much other than enjoy the fact that it says "You are signed in as {your email}".
    • 2017-02-21 - functionality removed following Persona shutdown - switched to IndieAuth

Shutdowns

The following sites used to provide or accept (consume) Persona logins but no longer do. Most recent first:

  • 2014-06-10 orchestrate.io is phasing out Persona login. The next time you sign in they require you to set a password.[1]

Shutdown of Persona services itself:

Criticisms

Reliance on JavaScript

Persona/browserid relies on JavaScript to work, forcing consumers to implement separate authentication functionality to support all users (e.g. users without JavaScript or when it fails to load).

History

Dead sites/domains:

  • https://persona.org which redirected to
    • https://myapps.mozillalabs.com/<nowiki>, and then to ** <nowiki>https://login.persona.org

See Also