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A Universal Roaming Profile?
Arnaud Sahuguet asks: "I have a cell-phone with my phone book, a PDA with my calendar info and my address book. I have my home desktop bookmarks, my work desktop bookmarks, my laptop bookmarks, my PDA bookmarks, etc.
They are all mine, but somehow they are not, because they live in
different networks (or on the same network but with different operators).Everybody keeps talking about convergence, but I don't see any
convergence on the user profile front (data that matters to me). Microsoft is pushing for .NET MyServices, Sun et al. are pushing for Liberty Alliance, Apple is pushing for .Mac. Is it the right way to go?" One of the large major issues surrounding such a system would be implementing it in a way where the user can control the flow of data: where it is stored, when a certain piece of data can be sent, and who is allowed to get it. Sounds like a fine idea to me, what do you all think?
Napster is (I should say was) a community of users willing to share MP3 music files, administered by a central server managing meta-data about users and files. I don't know what the exact goal was, but I can see it as a way to free ourselves from the music industry monopoly.
GUPster would be a community of network entities (e.g. servers at Yahoo!, server at SprintPCS, servers at my university, my home machine, etc.) willing to share standardized user profile components, administered conceptually by a central server managing meta-data about entities and components. The goal is to create synergies between network components in order to deploy value added services for the user. (Since I am working for the telecom industry, the goal is to make network operators happy by making end users happier.)
Just like in Napster, my user profile information will be distributed but the meta-data will be centralized (at least from a logical point of view) at the GUPster server. This way, I can decide that my credit card information will be stored at my bank, my calendar information on my Yahoo! account, my game scores on the Sony web site, etc. Network components storing my profile information will have to support the right set of interfaces and protocol and will register to the server the pieces of my profile they are storing.
Note: I will be the one deciding who stores what. Think of it as like moving to a new place. You can choose your electricity, gas, phone, cable and Internet providers.
Applications willing to access any of this information will talk to the GUPster server. And just like Napster, the server will not return data, but referrals (i.e. where this information can be found).
Unlike Napster, the central server will also enforce some access control policies defined by the user (let's call them my 'privacy shield'). If the request for user profile information is not OK (e.g. nobody can access my presence information after 9pm), the returned referral is empty.
Does it sound crazy?"
"As a user:
- would you be willing to have your personal profile information stored on the network?
- who would you trust? Your bank, your ISP, your cell phone provider, your company, the EFF, no one but you?
- what kind of guarantees would you require?
Napster is (I should say was) a community of users willing to share MP3 music files, administered by a central server managing meta-data about users and files. I don't know what the exact goal was, but I can see it as a way to free ourselves from the music industry monopoly.
GUPster would be a community of network entities (e.g. servers at Yahoo!, server at SprintPCS, servers at my university, my home machine, etc.) willing to share standardized user profile components, administered conceptually by a central server managing meta-data about entities and components. The goal is to create synergies between network components in order to deploy value added services for the user. (Since I am working for the telecom industry, the goal is to make network operators happy by making end users happier.)
Just like in Napster, my user profile information will be distributed but the meta-data will be centralized (at least from a logical point of view) at the GUPster server. This way, I can decide that my credit card information will be stored at my bank, my calendar information on my Yahoo! account, my game scores on the Sony web site, etc. Network components storing my profile information will have to support the right set of interfaces and protocol and will register to the server the pieces of my profile they are storing.
Note: I will be the one deciding who stores what. Think of it as like moving to a new place. You can choose your electricity, gas, phone, cable and Internet providers.
Applications willing to access any of this information will talk to the GUPster server. And just like Napster, the server will not return data, but referrals (i.e. where this information can be found).
Unlike Napster, the central server will also enforce some access control policies defined by the user (let's call them my 'privacy shield'). If the request for user profile information is not OK (e.g. nobody can access my presence information after 9pm), the returned referral is empty.
Does it sound crazy?"
Microsoft Passport?
*ducks*
Robots are everywhere, and they eat old people's medicine for fuel.
do you really think we want to trust someone else with that information? and if we did, would it be a commercial interest? I lied on my profiles from the time I got my first Hotmail acount more than half a decade ago. And I've seen more problems with companies having people's information than i care to count since then. So I don't see anyone with a background in information security or an idea of what goes on with that information, particularly those of us who are paranoid, as liking this concept one bit, regardless of who controls it.
In SOVIET RUSSIA... erm...NSA AMERICA, the Internet logs onto YOU!
hell I don't even trust my own bookmarks on my own computer.
Girlfriend: Bill, why do you have two more links listed under Porn?
Bill: Uhh, I have always had those, they are there just for laughs.
Girlfriend: Bill, what a bunch of crap.
Bill: Actually, they are full of great sites.
Nobody here will trust the government to setup a universal ID card - why on earth would we want a full profile, ready and waiting to be hacked?
Even the idea of what you are suggesting (info on the Internet) scares the shit out of me.
Now, on the other hand, a profile based on a physical item (ie/ a cd, datacard, etc) might be a nice idea. Just plug it into your PDA, cell phone, laptop, pc, etc.
Of course, considering how much information about me is sent across the Internet, maybe it's time to just give up privacy.
If we have to do that, let's at least all go nudist. That might be a fair trade off then...
Robots are everywhere, and they eat old people's medicine for fuel.
It's called my brain. Seriously though, I follow the philosophy of "A chain is only as strong as its weakest link." Distribution of resources (with no central access) limits the damage of a single weak link.
Of course, though, if I was interested in a central system, why not something implemented with a directory service (e-Directory or AD)? A nice little certification architecture for a multi-tiered privilege structure? I'd put my faith in NDS before a lot of the other products mentioned.
What is music when you despise all sound?
A co-worker and I just discussed this very thing yesterday! However, we defaulted to a hardware device that you would carry with you (quite possibly a PDA), then when you log into a machine, would have your preferences wirelessly available. Not just a desktop, but your cell phoen could wirelessly use teh address book for making calls, etc. I personally like the hardware solution best because then no one owns the cetral store of your personal data & preferences but you.
But, hardware or software, the only way this would be useful is if there was a standard for these major classes of data so multiple devices and applications could read, and in some case modify, the data. Your cell phone might not only want to use your existing numbers,but add a number when you receive a call from a never-before-seen number.
Who would make such standards? Surely Microsoft could give it a stab, and then extend it beyond usefulness. Maybe some of the existing standards are good enough, or could be extended (vCard, vCal, etc.).
Probably all just a pipe dream anyways.
There's no need for trust. Store my data on your server but store it encrypted. Only I have the decryption key. Everything I send to you and receive from you is encrypted. You are just providing the storage (and possibly I am paying you for this service).
Now, I don't need to trust you. I, of course, do have to trust my local machine and I have to trust the client I use to access my files. But I do not need to trust you.
Oceania has always been at war with Eastasia.
A better solution than storing it on someone else's server would be to make the interface synchronizable between platforms.
I'd keep a copy on my work desktop. I'd sync my home PC and my work PC over the internet (using VPN or SSL, of course.) I'd HotSync it to my PalmOS device. My Palm could Bluetooth it to my phone. My phone could GPRS it to my car's phone. My wife could sync the "Family" category on her Palm to the "Family" category on my Visor.
PalmOS does this sort of thing now with the HotSync program, but only in the limited "Handheld -- Palm Desktop -- Outlook" chain. With a robust protocol (almost certainly XML) and a strong standards committee this should not be an insurmountable task.
John
The poster illustrates the problem with examples such as bookmarks and address books ( which is a different problem than what liberty et. al tries to solve I believe) . These kinds of information can already be kept in an LDAP server and most applications can store and retrieve these from those servers. Outlook does it, mozilla does, ximian does it.
LDAP address book support is relatively mature in most email readers. Check out OpenLDAP for more info.
Single sign-on can also be done via LDAP. Or Kerberos/LDAP if you're so inclined. Netscape NTSych product, the Psynch® product, etc. can be used to sych NT or win2k with an external database. Check out projects such as pgina. There's a free general purpose NT password sync dll available from AcctSync. This DLL is nice, you can catch user passwords and pass them to an arbituary script with the username. This could be a perl script that updates LDAP to a vbscript that updates the coresponding Oracle user, it doesn't matter.
Also, it's simple to store public certs in an ldap server, making it easier to deploy PKI on a budget ( you don't want to know how much netscape and novell charges for this per user, trust me :)
In short, a lot of your problems can be solved right now by running a LDAP server and configuring your applications to rely on it for their datastore. Good luck.
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