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I think the point of the story is to illustrate that a Facebook account is not a useful way to validate a customer's identity.

mgkimsal 13y ago
I think the point is it's useful enough for many situations.
- grey-area 13y ago
  No, it's really not. Its very simple to create a fake FB account, all you need is an email. Relying on FB login is a really stupid way to try to verify identity - why not just use emails if they want some minimum bar for registration? FB is no more useful, ubiquitous, or reliable. I see the attraction for FB in this though; they're desperately trying to come up with ways to avoid becoming the next geocities or myspace - if lots of websites or services use their login or comments system, they will manage to stay at least minimally relevant for a bit longer. I'm not really sure what's in it for the businesses or consumers though, unless they trust FB...[1] [1] http://www.businessinsider.com/well-these-new-zuckerberg-ims-wont-help-facebooks-privacy-problems-2010-5 http://www.businessinsider.com/well-these-new-zuckerberg-ims...
  - interpol_p 13y ago
    But it really is good enough for the business offering WiFi. If Facebook validation causes 90% of their visitors to simply hit the "sign in" button on their default Facebook account, they have probably reduced a significant amount of bad behaviour on their network. The fact is the vast majority of people are already connected to Facebook under their real names on their mobile device at all times. Taking advantage of that (minimum security through "ease of use") is a good idea. The person who goes to the store and uses a fake Facebook account to use their free WiFi maliciously is almost non-existent. People will just take the path of least resistance to get what they want now. Stop thinking of their security in terms of how to circumvent it — that's easy — think of security in terms of which path most users will flow along. Then look at the tradeoffs of increased security to handle the remaining users, you generally find it's not worth bothering with them.
    - code_duck 13y ago
      The few people who do want to use the wifi maliciously will find creating a fake Facebook account a very minor obstacle to overcome. Therefore, I don't see what benefits it provides to the business.
      - lepht 13y ago
        How about data provided to the business on who their customers are? This seems especially genius in that it doesn't even require the extra step of "checking-in", but can provide the business with the same data.
        code_duck 13y ago
        I agree that could be useful. It's different then the claimed purpose of identity verification for prevention of malicious use, though.

mgkimsal 13y ago

I think the point is it's useful enough for many situations.

grey-area 13y ago
No, it's really not. Its very simple to create a fake FB account, all you need is an email. Relying on FB login is a really stupid way to try to verify identity - why not just use emails if they want some minimum bar for registration? FB is no more useful, ubiquitous, or reliable. I see the attraction for FB in this though; they're desperately trying to come up with ways to avoid becoming the next geocities or myspace - if lots of websites or services use their login or comments system, they will manage to stay at least minimally relevant for a bit longer. I'm not really sure what's in it for the businesses or consumers though, unless they trust FB...[1] [1] http://www.businessinsider.com/well-these-new-zuckerberg-ims-wont-help-facebooks-privacy-problems-2010-5 http://www.businessinsider.com/well-these-new-zuckerberg-ims...
- interpol_p 13y ago
  But it really is good enough for the business offering WiFi. If Facebook validation causes 90% of their visitors to simply hit the "sign in" button on their default Facebook account, they have probably reduced a significant amount of bad behaviour on their network. The fact is the vast majority of people are already connected to Facebook under their real names on their mobile device at all times. Taking advantage of that (minimum security through "ease of use") is a good idea. The person who goes to the store and uses a fake Facebook account to use their free WiFi maliciously is almost non-existent. People will just take the path of least resistance to get what they want now. Stop thinking of their security in terms of how to circumvent it — that's easy — think of security in terms of which path most users will flow along. Then look at the tradeoffs of increased security to handle the remaining users, you generally find it's not worth bothering with them.
  - code_duck 13y ago
    The few people who do want to use the wifi maliciously will find creating a fake Facebook account a very minor obstacle to overcome. Therefore, I don't see what benefits it provides to the business.
    - lepht 13y ago
      How about data provided to the business on who their customers are? This seems especially genius in that it doesn't even require the extra step of "checking-in", but can provide the business with the same data.
      - code_duck 13y ago
        I agree that could be useful. It's different then the claimed purpose of identity verification for prevention of malicious use, though.