Catch up on stories from the past week (and beyond) at the Slashdot story archive

 


Forgot your password?
Close
typodupeerror
×
Privacy Your Rights Online

AOL SNS Compared To Passport 12

Posted by Hemos from the birds-of-a-feather dept.
stuccoguy writes "AOL has their own universal profiler and logon service called Screen Name Service. It looks an awful lot like MS Passport and raises a lot of the same privacy concerns. AOL makes the same weak assurances about not sharing profile information without permission and does not require participating sites to have any specific privacy policy. I don't know how long this service has been around, but I thought it odd that so much attention has been given to the flaws in passport and I have not heard anything about what looks like an identical service by AOL."
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.

AOL SNS Compared To Passport More

AOL SNS Compared To Passport

Comments Filter:
  • us geeks who actually want to have different passwords for everything. I for one don't want to have just one login/password for everything i use. If you want to have a single login/pass for everything you do, that's fine by me, but I would still rather have the choice. Given the fact that this is not a very secure service to begin with, and the fact that the people who use this aren't going to be very computer-saavy(and have a good chance of coming up with an easily sniffed out password), and you're just asking for trouble. I really hope that AOL and MS's new fad doesn't catch on. I can maybe give MS the benefit of the doubt for at some sort of security, but AOL! No way! The last thing I need is some hacker to have a skeleton key to just about everything I need protected by this poor excuse for a service.

  • This isn't even news (Score:1, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward
    AOL has had their screen name service for at least a year now...How this is even relevant to anything, I do not know...
  • Anyone installed Netscape 6.1 yet?

    I installed it on XP RC2 (so I don't know if it's a global thing, or specific because I was running XP) and it made me sign up for a Netscape.net account before I could use the software. Maybe there was a way to circumvent it, but I was too in-shock at the time think about it.

    It's the same exact thing as Passport, just Netscape instead of Microsoft.
    • It's the same exact thing as Passport, just Netscape instead of Microsoft.

      Only it's not "just" Netscape, it's actually AOL. Even if it's not integrated, I'd be very surprised if the next major rev of Netscape, assuming there is one outside of an AOL client, doesn't force you to sign up for AOL's SNS.
  • These nasty emails I get from Time/Warner RoadRunner as well. Just today got a fully animated email from them which was sent to all customers, it seems, about the Osmosis Jones flick. So I guess even those who don't directly have AOL access get spam, so what's stopping the horrible spam from filtering to accounts of SMS direct from AOL and its companies? I'd be more concerned with that than what personal information, if any, they got from me, they shared.
  • it's the same basic program.
  • Yeah.......for some reason I don't like this already. For one, Microsoft tried it and failed. Now, if Microsoft, who is a company desingned around programming, and with what experience they have (although not shown) can't make something like this secure, how can AOL who has to make it secure yet easy for the "whats a modem?" people to use....no easy task. And look at the list of sites you can use this on now.....not too impressive ADP AuctioNet Big Step Get Music Harry Potter Intuit-Quicken Bill Manager Info Markets Looney Tunes Meredith Publishing - Better Homes & Garden Meredith Publishing-Ladies Home Journal PetPlace.com PurchasePro.com School Sports SimVest Solutions TestU Volume.com AOL Hometown AOL Quick Cash AOL.com AOL.com Web Mail AOL Address Book Classifeds Plus Fantasy Sports-Baseball Fantasy Sports-Basketball Fantasy Sports-Football Fantasy Sports-Hockey Groups@AOL Invitations Message Boards (AOL, NSCP, CSI) My AOL My Compuserve.com My Calendar (AOL, NSCP,AOL.com) Netbusiness You've Got Pictures Fine, it doesn't want to format nicely. Stupid IE... Aside from AOL.com, can't say that i have been to any of those sites.... Nice idea.....but i'd have to say i don't think it will work.
    • I think what's important to note, all of the above sites in italics are all AOL sites. AOL should be able to assure the same security, and same privacy level across all those sites.

      Pardon me, I should say those are all AOL-Time-Warner properties. Microsoft is still only dreaming of owning that much brandspace.

    • Yes they are AOL sites, and should be able to provide security. Thats why it is so sad.

Slashdot Top Deals

I'm always looking for a new idea that will be more productive than its cost. -- David Rockefeller

Close