ivucica blog

…my personal info!

I’m complaining about every site you come to requiring registration. Dudes, it’s 2010 — there’s OpenID. Let me just log in by clicking on “Google” icon or by entering my self-hosted OpenID or something.

I also hate Google’s implementation not letting me uncheck “Google Contacts” or similar when logging in with OpenID. I don’t want those a**holes getting all my contacts just so I can comment — that is, despite being faster, even worse than taking a few extra minutes to register and share just some of my info. I don’t want them having all my info. Not only that; Google actually thinks it’s a good idea they don’t provide those checkboxes.

Then there’s those guys who use Facebook Connect. This means I share all my Facebook contacts and a bunch of extra data  with whoever owns the site I’m trying to log in. Seriously? Facebook, please — all I wanted during the last few years is an option to uncheck all (and I mean all) the data I don’t want to share with a particular app. Including list of my contacts, Facebook! It’s none of their business, Facebook.

Webmasters are horrible. Tech blogs are horrible. However, identity providers are worse.

Sh&t.;

If you use Facebook and XMPP, rejoice. You can now get spammed via your favorite Jabber client: iChat, Pidgin, Adium, Psi, Finch, Meebo or any other that allows you to configure custom server (gtalk not included).

Federationing not supported.

Probably a fail for privacy, but a win for openness.

Instructions

Username: username@chat.facebook.com
Server: chat.facebook.com
Port: 5222
SSL: No
Allow plaintext authentication: No

Your username is your “vanity URL” suffix, for example firstlast in http://www.facebook.com/firstlast – so create this alias if you didn’t already.

Most recent example:

According to Slashdot, that’s what happened. I don’t really find much use for FriendFeed (I’d have an information overload, if everyone I knew used it). But I have handed them over a list of services I used, and they happily fed off the data I provided about my use habits.