A.P. Lawrence

Just an email address

Thu Aug 14 12:23:00 GMT 2003 Just an email address

Yesterday I had email from a Microsoft Evangelist who wanted to know if I'd be interested in participating in a beta of their latest Services for Unix.

Sure, why not? That interests me, and I think it definitely improves XP or Win 2K. but then came an email from the person running the beta, asking me for my Passport ID. If I didn't happen to have that, he directed me as to how to create it and explained that a Passport ID is "basically an email address that you use to create your passport."

I'm sorry, I think that's a little disingenuous. OK, getting an ID doesn't mean I have to store personal information. Certainly I'm not about to trust Microsoft with any of that, especially as they've already been hacked

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/3013665.stm

and even more damning, they completely ignored reports of the problem until the person who found it went public. But I don't WANT it, even if it were not such a sensitive subject.

So why do I need a Passport Id to participate in the beta? Here's what they say:

http://www.microsoft.com/whdc/resources/news/may03.mspx,

but that doesn't tell us WHY. If it's just an email address, what's wrong with MY email address?

Darned if I know the answer, but I do know that Microsoft has been trying to convince governments to use this ID for identifying individuals:

http://archives.seattletimes.nwsource.com/cgi-bin/texis.cgi/web/vortex/display?slug=passport18&date=20020418.

That's a horrible idea, and I don't want to contribute to any statistics ("we already have X million people signed up!") that might further that goal.

Sorry, Microsoft: you've never shown yourselves to be trust-worthy; in fact you've consistently demonstrated just the opposite. While a Passport ID in itself may be "basically an email address", it's a camel's nose in the tent, and I don't want anything to do with this particular camel.