Have you implemented Facebook Connect yet?

re: Have you implemented Facebook Connect yet?

Kevin Gordon — Wed, 17 Jun 2009 08:08:20 GMT

How much does this make you prone to data mining, hacking, and misuse?

re: Have you implemented Facebook Connect yet?

Jack Wallington — Tue, 09 Jun 2009 10:43:59 GMT

Hey Simon, very good point - identity theft is definitely an issue with this and any technology that requires a login/password that can be stolen. It's going to be about getting the right balance because, to continue with your analogy, internet registrations at the moment is like going into a shop and then using a different card and pin number in each one. It would be safer to do this, but it would also become difficult to manage. Hopefully (and I'm sure they are) developers are already investigating new methods of security.

For instance, imagine if your Facebook login followed a similar process as your online banking login - the most secure logins on the internet at the moment. It's long winded but with Facebook Connect you login once per session. At work for instance, if I choose to I can login in the morning and remain logged into all sites I have activated my Facebook account with all day.

So yes, some way to go but hopefully we'll get there sooner rather than later.

re: Have you implemented Facebook Connect yet?

simon cooper — Mon, 08 Jun 2009 15:46:36 GMT

Interesting article Jack, and very timely as we're just having a conversation around 3 of our own internal systems that require separate login details. However, I think there can be a down side to all this, based around identity theft and one which also has parallels to PIN numbers.

You are right to identify that the modern world contains a lot of passwords and PINs for the human brain to remember, and that can sometimes be problematic. So as lazy humans, what do we do, create them all the same. This opens us up to a significant problem if the details of our 'one' login/PIN is discovered, and I just wonder if there is a similar problem here. At least different and multiple login details are ring fenced from each other minimizing the potential risks.