This Week In Privacy: Jan 9, 2009

Wired

Weak Password Brings ‘Happiness’ To Twitter Hacker
An 18-year-old hacker with a history of celebrity pranks has admitted to Monday’s hijacking of multiple high-profile Twitter accounts, including President-Elect Barack Obama’s, and the official feed for Fox News.

TechNewsWorld

Will 2009 Be the Year of Multiple Digital Identities?
Just days after Twitter was hacked, a group of entrepreneurs and policy activists gathered to discuss “Privacy 2009: The Year Ahead.” The discussion demonstrated that the privacy debate is starting to mature.

InternetNews

New Data Breach, Privacy Bills in Congress
One year after trying unsuccessfully to introduce legislation on data breaches and protection of individual privacy, California Senator Dianne Feinstein is trying again.

Up Next: Twitter & Friendfeed Users Can Login to Passpack

We’ve been talking about the upcoming messaging release lately, but one thing that has apparently dropped off the radar is the 3rd Party Login integration with either Twitter or Friendfeed. In the end, we decided to do both. They’ll be released at the same time as messaging.

Welcome Aboard Twitterverse!

Google lovers can use their Gmail login to try out Passpack, OpenID pundits can use their OpenID’s and now… Twitter and Friend Feed have joined the fun as well. (I heart twitter)

Welcome aboard Twitterverse– you’ve got a Passpack account just waiting for you!

Who Are 3rd Party Logins For?

Some of you are curious as to why Passpack would be interested in allowing 3rd party logins – after all, Passpack is built to store logins, so isn’t it a bit of a catch 22?

For those of you who are already users, frankly, it wouldn’t make much sense to use a 3rd party login. You’ve already invested in Passpack and have created User ID, Pass and Packing Key. If you’re in a hurry, you can tick off remember me and breeze past the login screen, straight to the Packing Key. It doesn’t get much faster than that.

However, we’ve found that choosing three items (User / Pass / Packing Key) is a barrier to entry for some folks. Especially for people who aren’t entirely sold on the idea yet, but would like to sign up to have a look around.

So we figured – hey, why not make it easier for people to sign up and give Passpack a try? Therein lies the usefulness of 3rd party logins. New users need only pick a Packing Key in order to get started. Done. Simple.

A Note on the Login Screen

One complaint that came up is that the new (giant) buttons slow down login. Sorry about that – you’re absolutely right. In the upcoming release, the buttons will be smaller and should load more quickly. Hope that helps. Let us know if we need to take further measures – we’re listening.

Now Go Get Social

Ok, so now that you know who 3rd party logins are for, please go forth and tell your friends about Passpack. If they’re skeptical, let them know they can use their Google, Windows Live, OpenID, Yahoo, Facebook, Twitter or Friend Feed login to get in and peek around before committing. Who knows, they may very well do so (thank you!).