EPIC Urges State AGs to Pursue Microsoft Passport 244
An anonymous submitter sent: "The Electronic Privacy Information Center has sent a letter to all state attorneys general urging them to pursue Microsoft Passport under state consumer protection laws."
Customer's Information (Score:2, Insightful)
Also I object to the way this Passport is being forced upon everyone. In the UK it seems to be rather unreliable. Several times this month, I have seen MSN messenger say "The
I am not proud of having an account with them as it make me one of those statistics showing how popular they are. If it (hotmail) had been run by MS when I signed up I would never have done it.
I'm glad I gave completely bogus details since I really object to having my personal information being spread around the way MS (and other large companies) do.
I would say "oh, leave them alone" if their Passport/.NET service was reliable, since I don't care if they sell my fake information.
Re:Customer's Information (Score:4, Insightful)
I recently went to a seminar with MS's senior systems architect (UK) talking about Passport (mainly
Even if you do not believe this, he made an excellent demonstration of the problems of trust. A member of the audience (anti MS - he was heckling throughout the seminar) raised a similar concern. I paraphrase the conversation here:
Man: 'I don't trust MS's servers to keep my data safe and not abuse it'
MS: 'Well, whose servers do you trust'
Man: [thinks] 'Mine'
MS: 'Everybody raise their hands if you trust your data on this man's server'
I thought it was a nice example anyway.
Re:Similarity (Score:3, Insightful)
Microsoft Passport is a method of storing personal information that can potentially be used to profile your spending habits, income, lifestyle. Not to mention selling your identity by help desk personnel at microsoft.
Slashdot is an open forum that readers Willingly express their opinion. There is no reason to cancel a Slashdot account.
What if you dont want Microsoft to hold your information against your will because of a 'technical limitation' That is, frankly, bullshit.
Tried this at the National level.... (Score:4, Insightful)
Ok, so what they are saying is, the FCC didn't care, so we are going to attack at a lower level. While I admire their determination/wish them luck, how much will this knowledge that the FCC didn't do anything affect them? Food for thought this AM....
Passprot Issues (Score:3, Insightful)
Anonyimty and passport (Score:3, Insightful)
Staying anonymous on the web is getting tougher but not impossible, confirmed . MS cannot ENSURE privacy with the passport system this has been proven, and as such it is vunerable to state regulation.
Then again I trade grocery discount cards......
Re:Future tense (Score:3, Insightful)
also microsoft claimed (at least according to the letter) that they want all internet users signed up.this is really scary, especially given the companies history.
granted anyone reading this probably knows better so its up to us to warn everyone else.
Opt-In vs Opt-Out vs Passport. (Score:4, Insightful)
This is easy enough to see in the case of spammers and mailing list types who want to assume that you want to get their junk unless you "opt-out". With thousands of advertisers, this quickly becomes unworkable.
Now we come to MS and Passport. With the fact of Monopoly, it is possible to enforce the sale and or acceptance of other "products" because they are "part of the whole package" I beleive that in certain states, for Certain industries, you cannot enforce the sale of product number 2 as a prerequisite to purchasing product numbr one. This varies by the product. Of course, you can always say "included free" but some things that are free are not worth the price.
In the case of a monopoly, you can enforce the acceptance of items which would not otherwise be desired, and which may be a mixed blessing to the consumer at best. I am extraorinarily wary of Paspport and the all in one wonderful world of Microsoft Productivity that it promises for people.
Stepford Nation, indeed.
Biting off more than they can chew (Score:3, Insightful)
They are attacking MS because they collect personal information that could be exposed through security flaws?
How many dozens of e-commerce sites could be shut down on that account? Think about it.
Or are the Attorney Generals being asked to hold Microsoft accountable for their weak security? Bruce Schneier's been trying to go there for years [counterpane.com].
Unfortunately, he could tell EPIC exactly how far this is going to go.
Privacy for dummies. Chapter 1. (Score:5, Insightful)
Let us now put this into the context of the passport scheme - the EPIC letter states "Microsoft has indicated that the company's goal is to have every Internet user possess a Passport account", which I deem a fair summary of the situation (although, ideally, everybody would also use a Hotmail account too). Trundle along to, say, http://www.passport.com [passport.com] and look! See how you can sign up with ease! Get it now! Calooh! Callay!
Now let us try to pull the same trick that was pulled on me, and that I have fortunately not seen on any well-organised mailing list outside of Redmond. Enter an e-mail address, any e-mail address (excepting MS-specific ones such as Hotmail) - even make one up that obviosuly doesn't exist, and then... Carry On! Yes! There's still no security! At least, I guess, an e-mail gets sent to the e-mail address asking you to verify it, but this seems to be purely for service embellishment:
Using the new obviously-fake account, I can save settings, edit my MSN etc etc much as I may or may not want to. That is not the issue. What we have here is clearly a case of theft of privacy - without even trying, anyone is able to sign up anybody else's e-mail account for a passport. Who knows what havoc this could/will cause! Not being particularly au fait with MSN, I have only circumspection, but Microsoft have an epic journey to go before they reach "Trustworthy Computing [tm]" if they fail to understand the basics of privacy and intrusion, as highlighted here.
To conclude, I say get out there, fight it from the other end - the end that consumers will understand. Sign up as many fake and real accounts as you like to demonstrate just how fallible the system is. I'm off to see if they prevent scripting...
Against the law nonetheless.. (Score:5, Insightful)
Regardless of whether Microsoft has been proven to abuse the power, there are laws which make it illegal to posess the ability to abuse the power. The idea comes from a legal term: "conflict of interest."
When a person offers a service to another person in the financial/legal/medical world they are acting as an agent on behalf of the customer. Legally, that arragement has an implied "fiduciary responsibility" to the customer. That means if someone gives you the key to their account and you do something they wouldn't have agreed to, you are wrong and subject to criminal and civil liability. In the case of finances, there are EXTRA laws that say you are not even allowed to ofer such services to people if you have an interest in ripping them off (like other competing customers).
Bill Gates comes from a long line of lawyers: his family is a lawyer family. He knows he can flout the law wherever there is grey area because he has the money to risk. If he manages to win some small legal challenge, he has stretched the law to allow more exploitation and the windfall revenue that goes with.
When you (the US) have a big dog, you put a pinch (or shock) collar on him, and you jerk it hard (or shock him) when he *starts* to get out of line. You can let up a little, but only when he has a compelling fear of disproportionate retribution. Corporations are less like people who deserve rights, and more like dangerous, powerful animals that must be attended to with preemptive stewardship. Emotions, values, and ethics are not present in the brains of reptiles or boardrooms.
Re:Oh, Come On! (Score:5, Insightful)
Now, í'm not a MS basher in the way most people do.. i am however VERY concerned about their growing stranglehold on consumer choice. Ever so slightly people are lured into a total MS dominance...
Ah well.. i'll keep on dreaming of the old days...
Pandora's box (Score:2, Insightful)
Will this be a consumer protection issue, or an opportunity to gain some political karma?
Even worse than you say... (Score:3, Insightful)
Sounds to me as if they're using their OS monopoly (now a matter of Fact, and Law) to leverage a monopoly in the emerging Network Authentication industry. It gets all the worse, because there is no Network Authentication industry yet, and if MS has their way, it will never truly emerge because they'll own it from Day1.
It's a structural problem (Score:3, Insightful)
The proper design of such a system would implement the exact same features, but store the information on the user's local hard drive, with the option of backing this up to a third-party site choosen by the user. Also, the user should have the ability to enhance the encryption, by adding a layer using their own preferred encryption program (pgp, gpg, etc.) to wrap the already encrypted data. (You are, after all, planning on backing up your personal data onto someone else's servers.)
The service if implemented in this way would be cheaper for the software supplier to provide. And this method has many obvious superior features. So much so, that one needs to wonder as to why it was implemented in the way that it was. It wasn't for the convenience of the users. It wasn't for efficiency of operation. It wasn't for simplicity of design. It wasn't for easy of integration. Was there a legal reason? (There sure wasn't a technical reason!)
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Re:Customer's Information (Score:2, Insightful)
Here we see Microsoft conveniently ignoring a relative reference.
There's no reason why you would trust your data on my server, of course.
But would you trust your data on your server?
With .NET, Microsoft has acknowledged that the money is to be made by selling services as opposed to products. Microsoft wants to be the ones who sell you that service. Of course they're not going to acknowledge that you can provide that service yourself. Their survival depends on building a business model which prevents anyone but themselves from offering this service.