Re: Technical Review of WebAppSec Credential Management API [2/3] (was Re: Overlap with Credentials/Web Payments CG)

In general it's bad to identify someone by their name in a software system;
it's more of a label than identifying info for authentication.

What if his name is my name, too?

--
Jim Manico
@Manicode
(808) 652-3805

On Apr 15, 2015, at 7:28 PM, Crispin Cowan <crispin@microsoft.com> wrote:

  Credentials and Identities are never the same thing, and getting them
confused leads to incredible pain:

·        Identity: who you are. GUIDs, full names like John Jacob
Jingleheimer Schmidt, and phone numbers are identifiers.

·        Credential: a proof that you are who you are. Passwords, private
keys, shared symmetric keys, OTPs, and the shape of those metal key things
in your pocket are credentials.

·        Tragedy: that much of America treated Social Security Numbers
(SSNs) as credentials rather than identifiers. Duh L



*From:* Brad Hill [mailto:hillbrad@gmail.com <hillbrad@gmail.com>]
*Sent:* Wednesday, April 15, 2015 7:01 PM
*To:* public-webappsec@w3.org
*Subject:* Re: Technical Review of WebAppSec Credential Management API
[2/3] (was Re: Overlap with Credentials/Web Payments CG)



With <hat=individual>, regarding a suggestion I've seen to change what is
being stored/managed from "credential" to "identity": -1



If there is a word that is even more overloaded, fraught with complexity,
dense with both technical and lay meaning, and with a history of grandiose
attempts to boil the ocean, than the word "Credential", that word is
"Identity".



Please, let us not use that word.  My bank account is not an identity. My
email address is not an identity.  The means by which I authenticate to
them are not identities, and their relationship to each other and my actual
identity/identities are many-to-many.



If the proposal on the table at rechartering had been for an "identity
manager" I would have leapt out of my chair to keep this group out of that
particular tar pit.



In a similar vein, I've filed an issue suggesting changing the name of the
"avatar" attribute to "icon" to avoid any connotations of identity.



-Brad Hill