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posted by martyb on Saturday August 08 2015, @12:54PM   Printer-friendly
from the 867-5309 dept.

I recently had a spirited discussion with someone about authenticating to various websites. I personally take the approach of making an explicit new identity for every service I sign up for — local logins only. I never user a "Social" login like twitter/facebook/google, etc to access a site.

My reasoning is:

  1. It's a little harder to track my movements across the web; less data for the big players to crunch has to be beneficial in some way.
  2. When a data breach occurs, it limits my exposure to the breached entity. With the thought that, if the place you use as your only Authenticator for all websites get's compromised, what kind of exposure does that entail?

For some background, I'm a ten year professional in Web Infrastructure, with Identity and Access Management making up a decent part of what I do. After pretty much being called an irresponsible professional and told that no identity information will leak due to the way OAUTH works, I thought I'd throw the question out to the community to get a feel for how you handle accounts to different websites, as well as the inherent tracking and security concerns thereof.

Bytram noted that we had a discussion on a similar topic a while back: Personal Privacy in a Surveillance World -- How Important is it? - SoylentNews


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  • (Score: 3, Interesting) by zafiro17 on Saturday August 08 2015, @01:47PM

    by zafiro17 (234) on Saturday August 08 2015, @01:47PM (#219860) Homepage

    I do about the same thing. Can't believe anyone would want to authenticate to, fer example, Soylent News using their Yahoo/Google/Facebook/whatever information. Why link accounts? Unless it's in the name of laziness, that is.

    I use different passwords for different systems, and keep a password keeper on my phone, which I religiously back up. Can't imagine doing it any other way until they make us authenticate using retinal scans against a government database, at which point I will be in my cave in Montana, oiling my gun and waiting for the Revolution.

    --
    Dad always thought laughter was the best medicine, which I guess is why several of us died of tuberculosis - Jack Handey
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  • (Score: 3, Informative) by Nuke on Saturday August 08 2015, @07:11PM

    by Nuke (3162) on Saturday August 08 2015, @07:11PM (#219953)

    Can't believe anyone would want to authenticate to, fer example, Soylent News using their Yahoo/Google/Facebook/whatever information. Why link accounts?

    Lots of sites, particularly blogs and small specialised sites, just will not let you register to make comments or place queries without authentication from a major "social" site or specialised authenticator - Disqus keeps cropping up. I usually move on.

    • (Score: 2) by Hairyfeet on Sunday August 09 2015, @01:20AM

      by Hairyfeet (75) <bassbeast1968NO@SPAMgmail.com> on Sunday August 09 2015, @01:20AM (#220081) Journal

      Well its not a problem for me, because my FB? Its my shit account. I don't use my FB for shit, the only info it has is shit, and the only people I have as friends are ones i don't give a rat's ass about. So why would I care if some website learns about people I hate that do things I don't care about and which has less info on me than your average /. profile? Knock themselves out.

      --
      ACs are never seen so don't bother. Always ready to show SJWs for the racists they are.
      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday August 09 2015, @06:55PM

        by Anonymous Coward on Sunday August 09 2015, @06:55PM (#220353)

        So how do you really feel?...

        (Not that I disagree, FB is apparently designed on the hazing/Stockholm principle. Make everyone suffer so that they feel devoted towards the cause of their punishment. It just make me want to kick Zuckerberg in the nuts)

  • (Score: 3, Informative) by Common Joe on Sunday August 09 2015, @02:52PM

    by Common Joe (33) <common.joe.0101NO@SPAMgmail.com> on Sunday August 09 2015, @02:52PM (#220256) Journal

    Use something like no-script and get rid of your cookies between sessions.

    It's amazing how many non-Facebook websites have Facebook javascripts running on their websites. No thank you. I don't know what information they track. By logging into the service on that other website and being logged into Facebook at the same time, they may transfer information between the two.

    I do use Facebook to keep in contact with friends around the world. (For some of my friends, it's about the only good way to keep in contact with them. Yes, I know some of you disagree with my choice. But it's my choice.) To help mitigate that, I make sure my cookies are destroyed every time I close out Firefox. (There's a setting for that.) When I'm ready to log into an account that I don't want to be associated with my social networks, I close out Firefox then re-open it. And I make sure the Facebook scripts are not running on those other sites.

    Food for though.