News Item: UN warns on password 'explosion'

["Saqib Ali" <docbook.xml () gmail com>]

Nothing new: Username + Password reuse will make the net less secure
which in turn make people wary of spending money online.

Still a good read.

My question is why so many online discussion forum require logon to
post messages? Currently I have 20+ discussion forum account for the
various vendors that I deal with (e.g. citrix, wise, altiris, active
batch etc) . Why can't they be like mailing lists where the
username+password is optional/not-required.

Discussion forums use username+password as mean to
1) control access,
2) tie the post to a email address; and
3) prevent  anonymous spam.

Alternatively this can also be achieved by simply requiring  email
address along with post, and then sending a authorization email to the
poster before making the post visible on the forum. This will achieve
the same effect, and the user will not be burdened with remembering
username+password for each forum where they make posts.

--
Saqib Ali, CISSP, ISSAP
http://www.full-disk-encryption.net