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Comment by black6 | Hacker News Reader

I hate Login.gov. And ID.me. And every other external service the various USG agencies, departments, and administrations have "partnered" with to make logging in "easier." When I want to log into the VA's website, do I use my DS logon, or ID.me, or Login.gov, or MyHealthEVet? I don't know which one I used last, so I guess I'll just create a new login credential. I'm tech savvy and get confused, so I can't imagine the confusion of a boomer Vietnam veteran.

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Login.gov exists so you have one login across all federal agencies. Why would you hate this? It is more efficient and a better UX for consumers of digital government services. Admittedly, there will be some rough edges during this transition from disparate idps or legacy private corp identity providers, but the end state will be improved.

Cause it's not used across all federal agencies. There are a bunch of separate ones still.

So the argument against not implementing it is... it's not implemented everywhere?

It's this classic: https://xkcd.com/927/ There's already ID.me. Why add a new thing?

Because ID.me is a for profit company, and Login.gov is accountable to citizens as a GSA product. We swap out suboptimal solutions for more optimal solutions as the situation dictates.

I get the desire to upgrade, and I'm guessing there's a good reason the ID.me logins can't be migrated to Login.gov. But it's very rare and unsettling for login method and creds to change on a site. I've pretty much only seen that on govt websites... and botched Microsoft acquisitions. So there should be a high bar for this, and I hope Login.gov is really the last time.

> So there should be a high bar for this, and I hope Login.gov is really the last time.

Me too.

Because the part of ID.me that says

> I accept the ID.me Terms of Service and Privacy Policy *

I absolutely do not and will not. Their terms are a load of BS. Horrible terms, horrible company.

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