[mightytightywty]

Tying email addresses to a user's identity is a terrible idea.

- I don't want to give my email address to every site I use. It should be available to the site only if I approve their request.

- I use a unique email address for every site that needs one.

- What if I want to start using a new email address?

[Arelius]

I wouldn't actually say it's a terrible idea, for 99% of users it should work better, faster, and easier for them, since -very- few people have the same habits as you.

However, having said that, I do otherwise agree with you, I also don't want to give my email out to all of them, and when I do, it may be one of a few address, depending on how much I trust them, or care about the responses. I'm given very little option in that regard.

[nicolasp]

> it may be one of a few address, depending on how much I trust them, or care about the responses. I'm given very little option in that regard.

You are given the choice of which email address you want to use to log in. Isn't that exactly what you want?

[brendn]

I'm curious about that issue, too. Here's a brainstorm:

- An independent Identity Provider (IdP) uses some means of identification for the user (two-factor, iris scan, whatever)

- The IdP provides an anonymized email address to each site that the user logs into.

I'll have to read the spec a bit more to see if that's possible...

[callahad]

It's hard to do completely cleanly -- building an independent IdP that uses iris scanning or other two-factor systems is totally possible, and actually relatively easy.

Providing anonymized addresses is harder, since your IdP wouldn't be contacted until after the user has selected an address. In that case, you'd want a browser extension that generated addresses conforming to some scheme @youridp.com and automatically filled or selected them in the dialog when using Persona. Totally doable, but that part requires getting out in front of the call to navigator.id.request.