On Mon, Mar 18, 2002 at 11:07:44PM -0500, John Murphy wrote:
I hate to appear dumb but what does this mean to us using Linux, how would this effect us? I am not familiar with MSN Passport so I not sure what the effect will be.
I'm totally ignorant of the issue, but I'll answer anyway. I think the issue is that Charter passed on Wes's personal information (Name, address, and credit card or other payment info) onto Microsoft, so MS can increase their "enrollment" numbers. (The raw "number of clients" stuff looks really good for stock price, etc...) Although it's probably allowed in Charter's contract terms that no one reads, it's a really mean thing to do. I'm not familiar with the exact manner that passport manages security, (I'm sure it's stellar, given Microsoft's record) but a possibly more important issue is that now his payment info is at most as secure as the NET service itself. If someone manages to intercept an "I forgot my password" email, then they can spend his money at will. Yeah, there are a lot of reasons to not like this. Of course someone who actually uses the damn thing could probably tell us if it would be that easy to obtain his password. Anyone here a passport user? (And willing to admit it?) -Chuck