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Liberty Alliance Gains Momentum
kabanossen writes "News.com reports that AOL is joining the Liberty Alliance, which is a coalition of tech companies who are creating an alternative to Microsoft's Passport. Other members of the alliance are Sun, Nokia, Real Networks and General Motors "This provides a common language for authentication to ensure no one company controls the single authentication network" said a rep. " Mmmm...open standards. Hopefully.
Microsoft has Passport. This alliance offers another alternative. Both push our society towards a "know your neighbor", or perhaps "know your customer" model.
I remember a few years ago there being a pretty significant backlash against banks attempting the "Know your customer" model of business.
Let's not forget the "None of the above" option when contemplating these systems. Identification of a person is not always necessary or prudent, for a multitude of reasons.
sorry, but I don't want AOL to have my credit card info, just as I don't want Microsoft to have it.
when will these companies learn that we don't want a huge easily hackable database with all of our info in it? I'm quite happy memorizing my credit card number and providing it only when I feel it's necessary. With these passport like services, it's way too easy for a company to get you to sign in to get free service, and then simply start billing you after 'n' days, since they already have your credit card info, etc, in their database... At least now they have to send you a bill, or at the very least you have to provide a credit card number for a free trial...
I personally don't care if it's Microsoft, or some other tech company... I don't feel overally confident that a huge database with all of our info in it on the web is not going to get hacked...
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Programming is like sex... Make one mistake and support it the rest of your life.
the most ***important*** sentence in the article
"The sober truth is that although consumers are bothered by multiple user IDs and passwords, most consumers don't see much relative value in having one credential to navigate the Web," Avivah Litan, vice president and research director for Gartner, said in a statement.
before "single sign on" becomes useful, let's consider just some of things that don't exist now, that are needed to make it useful/valuable/necessary...to Joe/Jane Average
1. micropayments - we've been talking about them for years..still no standards, still no positive participation from the major central banking systems..PayPal has had to fight to get as far as it has
2. user authentication - biometrics are coming along nicely, but they have no useful installed base to speak off, and the first gen laptops with biometric user control has no way to "authenticate" the user
3. encryption - no agreement on standards, with the US Gov fighting ANY kind of suggestion to implement standard encryption of email, and pushing for "back doors" in every type of system they can
4. trust - who do you want to have access to ALL your confidential info - Armey, Bush, Case, Daschle, Ellison, Gates, Gephardt, Levin, McNealy, Murdoch, Rather, Redstone?????? All of these individuals (and their respective orgs) have been repeatedly shown to be driven by, UH, "goal achieveing orientation" and NOT by "philosophical/ethical/moral orientation"
5. Systems Security - even if you perceive that you trust the above folk to know that you peruse "Teletubbie FreakySex Sites" or "Death, The Beginning of your New Love Life" newsgroups,
ALL of these orgs have systems with major security flaws...so even with the "best of intentions"...chances are the whole world will find out what you did with that purple teletubbie doll...(and if you keep the video in "My Pictures" we can probably all watch it, too).
i just attended MS Professional Developers Conference in Los Angeles, where PassPort "single sign on" was a BIG push by the MS marketeers...most of the attendees couldn't have cared less
it's much more likely that after all the members of the "Billionaire Boyz Klub" are done with wrangling over "single sign on" as a way to insure "vendor lock in", that the G will step in, and shove their vision of this down ***EVERYBODIES" throats..."for our own good", of course
Ten quid, she's so easy to blind. And not a word is spoken...
It sounds like the Liberty Alliance is trying to create a set of common standards and not, as many people are freaking over, a second centralized database.
.NET is a good thing I think.
If they can come up with a decentralized yet intercompatible way of authentication then they might be on to something positive! Anything that can be done to prevent a Microsoft having a total strangle hold with