The Pitfalls of Facebook’s “Social Authentication”

Phil Nelson 27 January 2011 0 Comments

Dan Wineman shoves a hot poker up the ass of Facebook’s “social authentication”:

Captchas don’t verify identity. “Social authentication” challenges based on public information — especially information that the service itself provides, for free, to anyone who asks — don’t do that either.

The problem with “social authentication” is that second word, there. Facebook’s calling it an authentication method is dangerous because a false sense of security is… false. “Social captchas” just doesn’t have the same marketing chutzpah, I guess.

Link via @mrgan