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What are you going to tell your friend if Google and/or Apple unexpectedly, permanently locks them out of their account, with no possibility of appeal, because

by lapcat 3y ago

What are you going to tell your friend if Google and/or Apple unexpectedly, permanently locks them out of their account, with no possibility of appeal, because they triggered some kind of false positive in the "security" algorithms? Or if Google and/or Apple just happens to lose all of their data? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38431743 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38431743 These are real things that happen, as real and harmful as phishing. And yes, I'm talking about free consumers rather than corporate drones. Of course, in a corporate environment, you're not likely to get permanently locked out unless you're fired, and you won't experience personal data loss, because corporate data isn't yours in the first place.

tptacek 3y ago
I'm going to tell them that that's much less likely to happen than them getting owned up, and that the outcome of them getting owned up is much worse than the outcome of having a problem with Google or Apple. I know† lots of people that have been owned up, and zero people who have had the problem you're describing. I'm also going to tell them to beware of technologists, who have rooting interests that are more about industry politics and big picture principles than about user safety. I'll tell them that people lobbying against the increasing influence of big tech companies on security are going to lose that fight anyways, so there isn't much point in staking any of their personal safety on the debate, even if they do believe in it (in reality: very few of them will care). Regardless: just as a connoisseur of Internet nerd argumentation: if you're going to come at Passkeys, you need to do better than "the Unix greybeards were right about HTML email", because (a) no they weren't and (b) it obviously wouldn't matter if they were. † personally (added later)
- lapcat 3y ago
  > I'm going to tell them that that's much less likely to happen than them getting owned up, and that the outcome of them getting owned up is much worse than the outcome of having a problem with Google or Apple. Citation needed. > I know lots of people that have been owned up, and zero people who have had the problem you're describing. Anecdotal. My personal experience is the opposite. > I'm also going to tell them to beware of technologists, who have rooting interests that are more about industry politics and big picture principles than about user safety. You don't think I care about user safety? To the contrary, I care deeply about it. I just don't believe that paternalism and infantilizing the public increases public safety; rather, I believe it creates the very conditions that make the public ripe to be exploited. > you need to do better than "the Unix greybeards were right about HTML email" I have no idea what you're talking about. This is a straw man argument.
  - tptacek 3y ago
    It's a quote from the article.
    - lapcat 3y ago
      Ah, ok. Given that we're deep in a thread, I assumed you were talking about my arguments. In any case, that one paragraph in the article wasn't even intended as an argument against passkeys, since the HTML email ship sailed long ago (though I still use plain text religiously).

by lapcat 3y ago

tptacek 3y ago

I'm going to tell them that that's much less likely to happen than them getting owned up, and that the outcome of them getting owned up is much worse than the outcome of having a problem with Google or Apple. I know† lots of people that have been owned up, and zero people who have had the problem you're describing. I'm also going to tell them to beware of technologists, who have rooting interests that are more about industry politics and big picture principles than about user safety. I'll tell them that people lobbying against the increasing influence of big tech companies on security are going to lose that fight anyways, so there isn't much point in staking any of their personal safety on the debate, even if they do believe in it (in reality: very few of them will care). Regardless: just as a connoisseur of Internet nerd argumentation: if you're going to come at Passkeys, you need to do better than "the Unix greybeards were right about HTML email", because (a) no they weren't and (b) it obviously wouldn't matter if they were. † personally (added later)

lapcat 3y ago
> I'm going to tell them that that's much less likely to happen than them getting owned up, and that the outcome of them getting owned up is much worse than the outcome of having a problem with Google or Apple. Citation needed. > I know lots of people that have been owned up, and zero people who have had the problem you're describing. Anecdotal. My personal experience is the opposite. > I'm also going to tell them to beware of technologists, who have rooting interests that are more about industry politics and big picture principles than about user safety. You don't think I care about user safety? To the contrary, I care deeply about it. I just don't believe that paternalism and infantilizing the public increases public safety; rather, I believe it creates the very conditions that make the public ripe to be exploited. > you need to do better than "the Unix greybeards were right about HTML email" I have no idea what you're talking about. This is a straw man argument.
- tptacek 3y ago
  It's a quote from the article.
  - lapcat 3y ago
    Ah, ok. Given that we're deep in a thread, I assumed you were talking about my arguments. In any case, that one paragraph in the article wasn't even intended as an argument against passkeys, since the HTML email ship sailed long ago (though I still use plain text religiously).