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Facebook Introduces One-Time Passwords
angry tapir writes "Worried about logging into Facebook from a strange computer? There's now a way to get into the popular social network without entering your regular Facebook password. It's called a temporary password. To use it, users must list their mobile phone numbers with their Facebook accounts. They can then text a number from their phones and Facebook sends back a temporary password that is good for 20 minutes. The service will be available worldwide in the next few weeks."
I don't think this is an attempt to prevent interception of passwords in transit over the network; I believe it's an attempt to prevent keyloggers or other nefarious software/hardware on a machine from impacting the user's privacy.
Public labs at a university. While I have a hard time thinking of any time that I -need- to log into Facebook and can't just use, say, a smartphone app. There are a lot of occasions where in university you realize that there is something you need to do online (such as quickly type and turn in a paper you just remembered is due in 2 hours) but you can't trust the security of a lab computer (its pretty easy to install hardware keyloggers that just go between the PS2 or USB port and capture keystrokes) so you end up logging into an unsecured machine.
Taxation is legalized theft, no more, no less.
won't matter if you use a throwaway phone - all my phones are $4.88 from Dollar General or the local FYE
When people want more security on their facebook, they usually mean protection from Facebook and other corporations - not passwords themselves.
How about fixing the lack of privacy instead?
What happens when your phone gets stolen? I wouldn't them to have my phone and access to things like my email and facebook, let alone my credit cards and bank accounts. This seems even more risky considering the chance most smart phones could be hacked or some app on the phone turns out to be malicious.