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eBay Retires MS Passport Sign-In
fihzy writes "eBay have announced they will retire Microsoft Passport Sign-In and .NET alerts. The Microsoft Passport Directory of Sites has been discontinued, too. Is Microsoft's Single Sign-On vision edging towards oblivion?"
Is Microsoft's Single Sign-On vision edging towards oblivion?
It's been dead for a while, people are still cleaning up the carcus.
Michalangelo Progr
As a Webmkaster, I would like to have some simple authentication solution, so that the users dont have to register in forums and what not to post. However, the implementation is just unacceptable:
Small sites who would benefit frim such service don't have $10,000 to throw around, and large sites, which do have the money, just will write their own username+password code.
Why bother to sign in to passport when each user will only run windows longhorn, and each user will have their own account, and the current active account can be queried by the website via some new fancy secure API initiative that will be in longhorn... thus forcing everyone to have to run longhorn in order to do so much as use ebay or amazon...
;)
or perhaps I am suffering from wearing a tinfoil hat too much... but I think I might be on to something... replace passport with something directly tied to windows that users have no choice in, since their machines have unique ID's, as do their accounts... they will not be able to be anonymous on the web, and said info will be used to make browsing easier for average joe q. public, meanwhile identifying every user out on the web... really sneaky...
---
Programming is like sex... Make one mistake and support it the rest of your life.
Speaking personally, it's not that I mistrust Microsoft (which I do...) but rather I don't trust *any* password saving programs. Simply put, the more you trust these tools to carry your sensitive info, the more you give up your security and privacy.
Support the mob or mysteriously disappear.
Well, MS has single sign-in within their MSN zoo, but the idea was outside licensing to sites like eBay. I am not aware of any Yahoo! implementations on the sites outside of its own.
Bad idea, implementation irrelevant.
Instead of having to compromise each site (presumably on a semi-secure server), have just one single entity provide and verify the virutal avatar... based on data resident on a machine administered so incompetently as to have six types of spyware and four spammer worms on it because the underlying operating system is as secure as swiss cheese.
> Small sites who would benefit frim such service don't have $10,000 to throw around, and large sites, which do have the money, just will write their own username+password code.
I've lucky in that got a good "mind" for (secure!) passwords and have no trouble remembering dozens of them.
But even if I didnt... even if I wrote all my userid/password combinations on Post-It notes, a Post-It note resides in an area with reasonably secure physical access controls. Not so with a network-connected PC and a single-signon application.
Passport does have a lot of users, but only for Microsoft stuff. MSN, Hotmail, and Xbox Live, all very popular, use Passport.
(Xbox Live's case is a little more complicated, but it does use Passport at its core.)
Melissa
"Screw Sun, cross-platform will never work. Let's move on and steal the Java language." - Visual J++ Product Manager
Microsoft can trot out a list of companies participating in their latest 'innovation', but no matter how many companies sign up at the start, it really says nothing about the eventual likely success or failure of the system.
Too many people (especially pundits) see such a list and take it as irrefutable evidence that the thing in question is destined to take over the industry.
September 2011: Looking for Cocoa/iOS work in Boston area Cocoa Programmer Quincy, MA
Somehow Microsoft failed to consider that
1) with their record of bad faith toward their own customers and their ongoing security lapses, most knowledgeable end users would not trust Microsoft to manage their personal information, and
2) with their record of bad faith toward their own business partners and their ongoing security lapses, online retailers wouldn't relish the extra burden of sending a monthly tithe to Microsoft.
Luckily Microsoft makes bazillions off Windows and Office and can throw a couple billion here and there on various schemes--gaming, set top boxes, what have you. They know as well as anyone that the commoditization of operating systems and productivity software is underway and they won't be able to maintain their margins forever. If they don't find a cash cow soon they'll be forced to (horrors!) make less money.
The thought of a single web-based logon for access to so many different entities kinda scares me... Especially once it spans across companies.
It's sometimes irritating to remember a number of different logons/passwords, and maybe I'm just paranoid, but I prefer the compartmentalization that separate logons brings.
I don't want my password to be stored on a computer.
If I did, I would want it to be my computer.
If I didn't want it to be my computer, I wouldn't want it to be on a computer I had to pay for.
And even if I were willing to pay for the inconvience of having someone else be in control of my passwords, I wouldn't want that person to be Microsoft.
Passport was based on a flaw premise;
The reason we don't provide personal information to every site that asks for it isn't because it's too hard to type it in.
-- Should you believe authority without question?
Although MS has suffered from a lot of spectacular failures latelly, anything they do is in danger of becoming main stream. A monopoly on the desktop and office software is a tremendous weapon to wield against the rest of the world.
evil is as evil does