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Microsoft Opens Up Windows Live ID
randommsdev writes "Microsoft has announced the release of Windows Live ID Web Authentication. This means that WLID (formerly known as Passport) is now opened to third party websites to use as their authentication system. Any Windows Live user can potentially log in to a website that implements Web Authentication. Interestingly sample implementations are available in the Ruby, Python, Perl, and PHP open source languages amongst others — tested on openSUSE 10.2 but expected to work on any platform that supports these languages. More details are available in the SDK documentation."
This has been done many times in the past, and I am sure it will continue to happen. Most common were the times that people would set-up false bank of america websites and people would type in their account information....perfect set-up. What was even better was that these sites sometimes were set to bankofamrica.com or some slight variation of the site, so the common user would have no idea they were at the wrong site.
Well there are safeguards for this now, and I am sure if it gets to be a problem like that was at one time, it will also get fixed.
Great... it's copyrighted and provides no license.
It doesn't matter so much, it's not like MS WLID, formerly known as MS Passport can ever be made secure. It's fundamentally flawed from the design.
However, all the bad press was about MS Passport, so a simple name change and, Voila, no bad press about the product. Palladium was sanitize the same way.
Beta is broken and the link to classic doesn't work. Stop wasting our time or there won't be anybody left here.
The ToU is on the downloads page: https://msm.live.com/app/tou.aspx
(Please browse at -1 to read this comment.)
and how this compare to OpenID ? (See also OpenID Enabled for those interested in using it)
Misleading titles? Inflammatory blurbs? Keep in mind that Slashdot is a tabloid.
Software tokens are terrible, they fail much more often than not. SecurID tokens are the best thing to happen to computers since parc. The greatest thing is the simplicity, a random number shot through an algorithm changed every 60 seconds. If the numbers don't match you don't get in. They're simple to resync if the two sides fall out of skew. And reasonably difficult to counterfeit. In a few years(decades) the price will come down and you'll have one of these for just about everything. Your bank, your job, even some fancy car keys have similar technology in them. While they're not without their flaws, the securid's and similar 2 factor id have a lot of potential to cut down on identity theft.
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