No One Cares About Microsoft Passport

from the sign-up-because-we-have-to dept

Gartner has done a study showing what most people following this mess probably already knew. Most people don't really care about Microsoft Passport or any kind of "user authentication" system online. If they signed up for Passport, it was because they had to in order to get their Hotmail - not because they wanted a single authentication for multiple sites. In fact, chances are they absolutely don't trust Microsoft (or any company) to keep their data private across multiple sites and would rather it not happen. The best part of the study was that a fairly large percentage of people who signed up for Passport didn't even realize they had. They also found that Microsoft has probably inflated the numbers of Passport users well beyond reality. Personally, I don't know very very few people who want a single sign on system provided by a large company. The benefit to consumers is marginal (there is some, but it's not that big of a deal). The benefit to the company that gets all the data is obviously huge. The potential danger to consumers is also fairly large. I'd say the bad outweighs the good here.