Private Personal Agents vs. Microsoft's Passport

stefaanh asks: "With the recent MS Passport concerns, I remembered an 'IEEE Expert' 'JANUARY-FEBRUARY 1997 article called 'Managing your privacy in an on-line world' written by Michael McCandless. It talks about why you would hand out private information (on the Net), and proposes a personal agent that manages your info, in a way that you control, what, who and when to give out a selection of your sensitive data. Who benefits: you, and the companies that don't pay for outdated or inaccurate data anymore, but [pay you] for accessing correct data. Since I consider Passports 'security' not as serious as the potential of consumer tracking, what sits in the way for this personal agent to challenge the threat of Passport's centralized approach? Isn't the time right for such an implementation?"

Comments

Re:The ultimate personal agent

[jheinen]

It doesn't matter if people are lazy or not. Your brain and keyboard don't mean squat when you want to order a book from Amazon and it says "Passport required." When all commercial sites require this, you are left with no choice but to sign up and have your data managed by M$. Either that, or forgo purchasing online and start buying all your stuff from brick & mortar shops with cash.

-Jeff

Interesting approach

[sfe_software]

I personally hate Passport. However, if a centralized system were done *correctly*, there are a couple of advantages.

You can use it from any PC. A "wallet" system is just too complicated for most users (it can be transported, but most users won't bother). Plus, if I'm not mistaken, Passport would work from any browser. Wallet systems (which I believe IE and Mozilla both have an implementation) work only on that browser, and on that PC unless you export.

On top of that, the Passport system is more automatic; get a Hotmail account and you have a Passport account. Use one of the participating online retailers and you have a passport account.

OTOH, if a "wallet" system were implemented that was cross-browser (if not cross-platform), and more easily transportable, maybe it would catch on. I would trust my data on my own machine long before I'd trust it on a bunch of NT boxes up in Redmond (or wherever)...

In either case, personally I prefer to judge everything on a site-by-site basis. I often use a different email address for each site, partly so I can track originators of SPAM lists and such... so neither method would work for me.

Also keep in mind that, if you use a "wallet" system and use the same information at each site, this information could just as easily be shared between sites, and compared/compiled to track your usage, though admittedly it would be more difficult/less likely than a centralized system.