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Helping Surfers Sidestep Site Registration

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the name-rank-and-serial-number dept.

netbuzz writes, "PrefPass, a startup debuting at DEMO today, is looking to do for the onerous Web site registration process what Amazon has done for shopping: one click and you get the goods. If it catches on, sites requiring full registration may feel the heat." Looks like sites will have an incentive to implement PrefPass; it's not antagonistic to their interests in the way Bugmenot is.

3 of 91 comments (clear)

  1. No surprises here by rts008 · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Just another vehicle to serve up even more advertising.

    FTA: "In exchange, users agree to let PrefPass sites access their pref lists, thus allowing them to customize the experience, as well target advertising to the user."

    I'll stick with BugMeNot, thank you.

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  2. You may wish to RTFA... by Penguinisto · · Score: 3, Interesting
    Umm, unless your email addy and bookmarks list is enough for someone to take out credit in your name, I sincerely doubt that...

    I honestly don't see an easy way for spammers to cull this thing (unless they bust into the PrefPass servers, I suppose).

    /P

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  3. My Thought... by Kaenneth · · Score: 3, Interesting

    There could be a standard HTTP header field defined.

    Call it 'X-Demographics'

    Contents would be of the form

    "X-Demographics: Age/28, Location/Seattle, Sex/Male, Occupation/Programmer"

    All free-form and user selected, with browsers offering a dialog where users can set common information, and choose when/where to send it.

    Servers must not require the info, and must accept invalid data without dying ( "Age -1/Location The Moon/Sex Yes Please" ) but if provided, they can customize their content/advertising.

    Sure, users might deliberatly provide false data, but they would do that anyway with a 'log on' form; and if you don't want to provide it, you don't (default in a browsers should be nothing sent without user approval) and browsers should be able to control which sites get sent what data. Even a simple mechanism, such as the first time you visit a site, do not send data, but if you return to the site later, then send it.

    Details of parsing are trivial (I know, not really), once a standard basic layout and header field name is chosen, I'm going for something like the 'Accept:' field format.

    I don't mind reasonable advertisments, but as an example, as a guy, I really have no interest in tampon ads, and I doubt the tampon companies want to spend their advertising dollars on me.