What's the overlap of users who (a) have trouble with login forms and (b) leave their email open all the time (whether browser or dedicated app)? This relies on a very high level of comfort with email and context switching. This could potentially introduce an increase in spam if users are now instructed to click on links in emails blindly as long as they match a site that they're familiar with. Leaving one app/tab fo…
A bold but simple login system
41–50 of 101 posts
Re: A bold but simple login system
#42This means the second someone loses access to their email account, they lose access to every account on every system attached to it via this method. I'm not sure introducing a single point of failure is a good idea.
Re: A bold but simple login system
#43Please, somebody figure out how to get us over the hump to the bright future day when we all have asymmetric keys embedded in hardware and we can leave passwords behind.
Tada! http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Security_token Guess what? Even worse usability.
Re: A bold but simple login system
#44This means the second someone loses access to their email account, they lose access to every account on every system attached to it via this method. I'm not sure introducing a single point of failure is a good idea.
Re: A bold but simple login system
#45Apple should augment a single sign-in mechanism with a transparent 2nd factor embodied in the iPhone. This would result in your being automatically logged into any participating site while using Safari on the same LAN as your iPhone. The mechanism would fall back to the traditional password if you don't have the phone. Bluetooth could also be used to communicate to the hardware. The hardware would only run signed App…
Re: A bold but simple login system
#46Re: A bold but simple login system
#47Someone needs a history of internet mail. It was never designed to operate in real time or be fast, whereas people expect logins to be fairly quick. Also, using an email backchannel and one time keys moves the security from an encrypted connection (assuming SSL) to an unencrypted SMTP connection anyone can view... Back in the good old days of UUCP you might wait a day or two to get mail from across the globe...
Who really cares what it was designed to do? The fact is, almost the entire userbase is going to receive that email before they can switch tabs to their email inbox. So even though it wasn't designed to be immediate, it is in practice, and we have a whole list of technologies that we use despite intent (HTTP wasn't designed to be stateful, and yet we use it as such constantly). Mail transmitting is only sometimes enc…
Re: A bold but simple login system
#48This would drive me up the wall. I don't want to have to sit in my mail client, waiting for it to pull down the message that may-or-may-not have arrived at my mail host yet, when it's incredibly easy to use a password manager for everything without having to leave my browser. He bemoans the number of controls you need to interact with to log in, but to get to log in with his method, I need to put in my email address…
Definitely not something I would want for my bank account, but who cares for logging on to a support forum or some other trivial account.
Re: A bold but simple login system
#49Passwordless authentication done right is a subject in here, try to break the auth and let me know... http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4291856
Re: A bold but simple login system
#50The problem with "solutions" like these is that they start with faulty premise that "passwords are broken". This particular idea sounds like death by a million cuts.
It is titled "The $300 million button" and details actual user experience at an ecommerce site. Note how many users even know what email address they used, how many got the password right, daily password resets etc.