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?"

Comments

Re:well

[superpulpsicle]

Man I had a .net account. I always frequently login. Out of the blues one day, my password just locked me out. I emailed the M$ support folks, and not a single person replied. My account was just gone basically, and no one gave a shit.

I actually used it

[CdBee]

6 months after MS Passport was introduced on eBay I started using it. I gave up using it 3 months later after missing numerous sales due to passport authentication fscking up and logging me in moments after the bid deadline ended

Eventually, I got a new login and walked away from one with 20 favourable reviews on it thanks to that damned system. Hope it fries in hell.

Re:I actually used it

[prostoalex]

Heh, yeah, that's true, Passport tends to lose your authentication cookie more often that a 3-year-old would lose his toys. You have financial losses, I would just get frustrated.

On top of that I used their hotmail account to register for the Passport, since that's their recommended option. I never use Hotmail for my daily webmail, in fact, the only message I have there is a thank-you for signing up. The bozos from hotmail kept threatening me with turning off the account, and they did execute their threats every 90 days. So unless I remember to log in to the Hotmail account, which I never use, I lose my passport, and have to go through easy but still frustrating retrival system at hotmail.

The guys who designed this system are probably competing with Clippy team on who builds the most annoying product.

Re:nope

[Broadcatch]

Windows Longhorn will have an identity system in it, currently code-named InfoCard. But from what I hear, they are actually looking for open standards on which to base their identity infrastructure, and this would make a *lot* of sense. If they promoted a system that was 100% decentralized (as opposed to the 100% centralized Passport), free and open source, and integrated it sweetly into their OS, they would have an identity system that would be peerless and increase their market share (or at the least, not drive people away so fast).

The only system I know of that fits the bill is the nascent Identity Commons system that is just starting to come online. (Disclaimer: I am 2idi's CTO)

Re:Edging into oblivion?

[skrolle2]

I used to work on a similar system for another major portal business, although only for our own portfolio of websites, and we took this stuff really seriously for a while. When eBay joined, we were starting to get a bit scared, because if the passport thing had taken off, our business would have gone bye-bye.

The worst thing about Passport and the related .Net services was that MS intended not only to store a username and password, but store ALL user information. Participating sites would then have free access to the information they contributed to the system, but would have to pay for anything else. Also, using the entire .Net portfolio would have made it simple for web developers to build a system with a "secure" passport logon and user database, but VERY difficult to obtain control over their own data. Microsoft, on the other hand, would have complete access to all user data regardless of source. They could have become the gatekeeper, the only company with control over user data, and everyone else paying them for data mining rights in their own data. We should be VERY thankful that it didn't take off.

In retrospect, Microsoft made a bunch of mistakes:

1) The whole thing got muddled in the general confusion of .Net.

2) Most other web companies actually valued control of their user data more than ease of development.

3) No user demand for single sign-on, either because users don't care, or because they actually value their privacy and don't want different websites to share user data.

It's finally gone. Good riddance.