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Identity, Single Sign On, and 'information gleaned for marketing' etc. are all different overlapping issues. Truly there are almost zero situations in which an

Identity, Single Sign On, and 'information gleaned for marketing' etc. are all different overlapping issues. Truly there are almost zero situations in which an entity needs to know your real identity. You bank, surely, but you go into the bank to do that. Single Sign on via Google and FB is now normative because they're ubiquitous and convenient, and of course, FB id's come with a greater possibility of legitimacy, and nice FB pixel marketing data. I suggest that thre is something that could work, it just needs to be put forward by a credibly entity that for whatever reason feels it's in their interest, whereupon those interests are not entirely conflicted with the individuals right to privacy.

ummonk 7y ago
Thoughts on Apple SSO?
- sonnyblarney 7y ago
  It's too early to tell, but because they have such a wide reach and own 1/2 of mobile, if they push it hard and it's a clean enough solution it may just work as a relatively 'privacy first' orientation. But then websites don't get their FB pixel data, can't retarget and build ad audiences. FB also does some heavy lifting in terms of managing forum comments, which can be useful in some specific situations. As long as people are willing to click in the FB/G sign in buttons, I think they'll be there to use. I suggest the biggest opportunity for change may come in the form of regulation and legislation.
  - Jaruzel 7y ago
    > and own 1/2 of mobile That's in the US only. The Rest of the World value is much lower.
- zadeh 7y ago
  Well none of these social media SSO supports a high Level of Assurance anyway.
mLuby 7y ago
>Truly there are almost zero situations in which an entity needs to know your real identity. 1000 percent this! What entities really need to know to do their function is shockingly small compared to what they ask for. Here are some examples: - Bank: proof you are authorized to make decisions for a given bank account. (Possibly jurisdiction info if the government forces banks to screen on citizenship.) - Voting: proof that you didn't vote twice. (Possibly jurisdiction info if you are only allowed to vote in a specific area.) - Job: a nickname, contact info, where to send compensation, a way to grant (and revoke when terminated) your access to non-public information. (Possibly jurisdiction info if the government forces companies to screen on citizenship or calculate taxes in a specific way.) - Social media network: way for others to connect with you (eg email). - Bars: (possibly proof of age, if the government forces establishments to limit sales on that basis.) - Online or in-person payments: proof that the funds transferred to the business's account.
- danielscrubs 7y ago
  That would work but would suck when you wanted to know who did what. Makes me think about: if all in a team has responsibility then no one has.
- tooop 7y ago
  Any online government/medical/banking/leasing/crediting service needs my real identity. In real world there are even more services. 99% of online services doesn't need my real identity but the ones that need it definitely aren't almost zero.
  - TeMPOraL 7y ago
    They ask for it. They may currently require it. They don't necessarily need it. E.g. Some medical services may need to know your medical history. Others need just some token that lets the bureaucracy figure out who to ultimately bill for it. Leasing/crediting services - well, they'd love to know everything about you, but that doesn't mean they should get it.
    - 7y ago
dwaite 7y ago
Identity is a somewhat philosophical and thus nebulous concept. What is my 'real identity', honestly? How does a bank prevent me from opening an account in the name of my hypothetical identical twin if I borrow the appropriate documents? How would a government agency? The reality is that identity winds up being evaluated as a relationship. My bank identity is as a particular customer, and me attempting to opening an account in someone else's name doesn't change that - rather, it is a sign I as a customer am planning to commit fraud. In some fashion, a process attempting to tie an interaction to an identity is actually attempting to tie behavior to consequences. This made the article a bit difficult to understand - was the point that the sharing of identity, and thus trying to die back to one 'true/real identity', is flawed? Or perhaps that this concept of local identity isn't always needed to perform a transaction - I don't care who a customer is as long as I know the information that I'm acting on is true? Single Sign-on itself is an often abused topic - it generally means that authentication (providing proof that you correspond to a particular identity I hold) is reused. However, Federation is the process of sharing that information across domains, and is usually done via protocols like OpenID Connect or SAML. Google Sign-In, Facebook Connect, and other IDPs usually combine both - and the value comes not from signing in with google credentials, but that you often already are signed in with google/etc credentials. The value you get back contains a subject attribute, which is a unique (possibly globally, or perhaps only within your service) identifier for the user account upstream. This value is what turns these social logins to an authentication for your own site or app. At the minimal level, the information leakage is mostly to the IDP - they see where and when you are authenticating. However, the IDP is free to offer whatever additional attributes and authorizations they decide to - verified email addresses, API access to user data, and so on. Possibly, the IDP even shares some piece of information your service might rely upon because you consider it the user's 'real' identity.
jcims 7y ago
I think there's a lot of room for a faceted identity model in which the user is in control of what attributes get shared. Think about shopping at Amazon where they get a payment authorization from your bank and a shipment authorization from your shipper and never know your name, your bank account number or even your home address. It's technically very doable...the problem is that there isn't much incentive for Amazon to let go of all of that metadata.
- bigiain 7y ago
  > the problem is that there isn't much incentive for Amazon to let go of all of that metadata I think there's some ideas going around that might work here. Make companies responsible for securing that data, and make it _expensive_ if/when they get breached. Make storage of personal data "toxic", so companies will _only_ keep it for the minimum amount of time required for whatever use it was gathered (where only companies like FB & Google, and to a lesser extent Amazon would admit to themselves that it was collected for the express purpose of creating a historical record of individually identified PII). Here (in .au) we have "mandatory breach disclosure laws", which while having fewer teeth that I'd personally prefer, and a reasonably useful "first start", they're quite useful in the context of discussions around "So why are we asking for cusomer's date of birth? Is that something you'd want to explain in a mandatory breach report if our database gets hacked?" and "So what's our retention policy on this data we're collecting? Forever? Really? What's our plan around reporting data breaches, and do you want to ever have to explain why we've got 5 years worth of records breached when we only needed to store that data for 90 days after which most of the details were never needed again?" I'm _hoping_ sometime soon the GDPR is going to quite publicly go through it's due process, giving some company every chance to become compliant, be continually ignored, and then eventually hit them with an eye-wateringly big existentially threatening fine that the offending company has absolutely no grounds to claim it didn't know about, didn't have several appropriately escalated warnings, and were just blatantly abusing their users personal data without any regard for personal privacy or European Law - and have zero public support for their complaints about the fine. (Personally and perhaps somewhat pettily, I hope this happens to Uber or Facebook, but pragmatically I'd settle for anything matching that description, to "pour encourager les autres" and for use in meetings and documents when clients or cow orkers suggest doing shady things with other people's personal data...)
socceroos 7y ago
Zero knowledge proof
PeterisP 7y ago
I'd argue that in pretty much every transaction where trust is involved (all e-commerce, and not only that) I'd want to know the other party to be not anonymous so that it's possible to combat breach of trust: 1) to make it easy to verify if they're trustworthy based on past experience; 2) to make it easy to identify and prosecute them if trust is breached; 3) make it difficult for them to 'start from scratch' if they deservedly gain a bad reputation; Currently the vast majority of e-commerce happens through credit card networks on principles that essentially can work only because it's very hard for CC merchants to be anonymous. Also, if I'm entrusting my data to some service, I do want the operators of that service to be not anonymous - if it is easy for them to escape liability for misusing that data, then that significantly raises the risk that they might actually misuse that data. A lot of useful things in our society require or assume trust. Anonymity weakens trust; accountability through clear, unescapable identity strengthens trust.

ummonk 7y ago

Thoughts on Apple SSO?

sonnyblarney 7y ago
It's too early to tell, but because they have such a wide reach and own 1/2 of mobile, if they push it hard and it's a clean enough solution it may just work as a relatively 'privacy first' orientation. But then websites don't get their FB pixel data, can't retarget and build ad audiences. FB also does some heavy lifting in terms of managing forum comments, which can be useful in some specific situations. As long as people are willing to click in the FB/G sign in buttons, I think they'll be there to use. I suggest the biggest opportunity for change may come in the form of regulation and legislation.
- Jaruzel 7y ago
  > and own 1/2 of mobile That's in the US only. The Rest of the World value is much lower.
zadeh 7y ago
Well none of these social media SSO supports a high Level of Assurance anyway.

mLuby 7y ago

>Truly there are almost zero situations in which an entity needs to know your real identity. 1000 percent this! What entities really need to know to do their function is shockingly small compared to what they ask for. Here are some examples: - Bank: proof you are authorized to make decisions for a given bank account. (Possibly jurisdiction info if the government forces banks to screen on citizenship.) - Voting: proof that you didn't vote twice. (Possibly jurisdiction info if you are only allowed to vote in a specific area.) - Job: a nickname, contact info, where to send compensation, a way to grant (and revoke when terminated) your access to non-public information. (Possibly jurisdiction info if the government forces companies to screen on citizenship or calculate taxes in a specific way.) - Social media network: way for others to connect with you (eg email). - Bars: (possibly proof of age, if the government forces establishments to limit sales on that basis.) - Online or in-person payments: proof that the funds transferred to the business's account.

danielscrubs 7y ago
That would work but would suck when you wanted to know who did what. Makes me think about: if all in a team has responsibility then no one has.
tooop 7y ago
Any online government/medical/banking/leasing/crediting service needs my real identity. In real world there are even more services. 99% of online services doesn't need my real identity but the ones that need it definitely aren't almost zero.
- TeMPOraL 7y ago
  They ask for it. They may currently require it. They don't necessarily need it. E.g. Some medical services may need to know your medical history. Others need just some token that lets the bureaucracy figure out who to ultimately bill for it. Leasing/crediting services - well, they'd love to know everything about you, but that doesn't mean they should get it.
  - 7y ago

dwaite 7y ago

Identity is a somewhat philosophical and thus nebulous concept. What is my 'real identity', honestly? How does a bank prevent me from opening an account in the name of my hypothetical identical twin if I borrow the appropriate documents? How would a government agency? The reality is that identity winds up being evaluated as a relationship. My bank identity is as a particular customer, and me attempting to opening an account in someone else's name doesn't change that - rather, it is a sign I as a customer am planning to commit fraud. In some fashion, a process attempting to tie an interaction to an identity is actually attempting to tie behavior to consequences. This made the article a bit difficult to understand - was the point that the sharing of identity, and thus trying to die back to one 'true/real identity', is flawed? Or perhaps that this concept of local identity isn't always needed to perform a transaction - I don't care who a customer is as long as I know the information that I'm acting on is true? Single Sign-on itself is an often abused topic - it generally means that authentication (providing proof that you correspond to a particular identity I hold) is reused. However, Federation is the process of sharing that information across domains, and is usually done via protocols like OpenID Connect or SAML. Google Sign-In, Facebook Connect, and other IDPs usually combine both - and the value comes not from signing in with google credentials, but that you often already are signed in with google/etc credentials. The value you get back contains a subject attribute, which is a unique (possibly globally, or perhaps only within your service) identifier for the user account upstream. This value is what turns these social logins to an authentication for your own site or app. At the minimal level, the information leakage is mostly to the IDP - they see where and when you are authenticating. However, the IDP is free to offer whatever additional attributes and authorizations they decide to - verified email addresses, API access to user data, and so on. Possibly, the IDP even shares some piece of information your service might rely upon because you consider it the user's 'real' identity.

jcims 7y ago

I think there's a lot of room for a faceted identity model in which the user is in control of what attributes get shared. Think about shopping at Amazon where they get a payment authorization from your bank and a shipment authorization from your shipper and never know your name, your bank account number or even your home address. It's technically very doable...the problem is that there isn't much incentive for Amazon to let go of all of that metadata.

bigiain 7y ago
> the problem is that there isn't much incentive for Amazon to let go of all of that metadata I think there's some ideas going around that might work here. Make companies responsible for securing that data, and make it _expensive_ if/when they get breached. Make storage of personal data "toxic", so companies will _only_ keep it for the minimum amount of time required for whatever use it was gathered (where only companies like FB & Google, and to a lesser extent Amazon would admit to themselves that it was collected for the express purpose of creating a historical record of individually identified PII). Here (in .au) we have "mandatory breach disclosure laws", which while having fewer teeth that I'd personally prefer, and a reasonably useful "first start", they're quite useful in the context of discussions around "So why are we asking for cusomer's date of birth? Is that something you'd want to explain in a mandatory breach report if our database gets hacked?" and "So what's our retention policy on this data we're collecting? Forever? Really? What's our plan around reporting data breaches, and do you want to ever have to explain why we've got 5 years worth of records breached when we only needed to store that data for 90 days after which most of the details were never needed again?" I'm _hoping_ sometime soon the GDPR is going to quite publicly go through it's due process, giving some company every chance to become compliant, be continually ignored, and then eventually hit them with an eye-wateringly big existentially threatening fine that the offending company has absolutely no grounds to claim it didn't know about, didn't have several appropriately escalated warnings, and were just blatantly abusing their users personal data without any regard for personal privacy or European Law - and have zero public support for their complaints about the fine. (Personally and perhaps somewhat pettily, I hope this happens to Uber or Facebook, but pragmatically I'd settle for anything matching that description, to "pour encourager les autres" and for use in meetings and documents when clients or cow orkers suggest doing shady things with other people's personal data...)

socceroos 7y ago

Zero knowledge proof

PeterisP 7y ago

I'd argue that in pretty much every transaction where trust is involved (all e-commerce, and not only that) I'd want to know the other party to be not anonymous so that it's possible to combat breach of trust: 1) to make it easy to verify if they're trustworthy based on past experience; 2) to make it easy to identify and prosecute them if trust is breached; 3) make it difficult for them to 'start from scratch' if they deservedly gain a bad reputation; Currently the vast majority of e-commerce happens through credit card networks on principles that essentially can work only because it's very hard for CC merchants to be anonymous. Also, if I'm entrusting my data to some service, I do want the operators of that service to be not anonymous - if it is easy for them to escape liability for misusing that data, then that significantly raises the risk that they might actually misuse that data. A lot of useful things in our society require or assume trust. Anonymity weakens trust; accountability through clear, unescapable identity strengthens trust.