Why do so many sites require user IDs to interact with them?

mrochester

mrochester

mrochester

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My dad is having a grumble at the moment about websites and online services requiring registration with user names and passwords at every turn.

He’s just tried to login to All4 app on his TV at which point it’s prompted him its given him an error ‘login failed’. He gave up straight away because it was so much hassle for him to input his user name and password. Why can’t he just watch All4 without logging in?

His other grumble was trying to buy a train ticket and right at the end of the ticket buying process the system advising him that he already has an account and to login with his password (which he can’t remember so has to begin the reset process). Why can’t be just buy the ticket without having to login?

And I quite agree with his grumbles. I have 142 usernames and passwords saved in my password manager. It’s obscene.

When is it going to get better?

M.
 
For anything involving commercial transactions fair enough IMO but it is getting frustrating - quite a few sites recently I've had to pull out of google cache and/or use private browsing to view information as either they only contain every day information that isn't worth making an account for or detect that I've an account of X site (Facebook, Google, etc.) and want me to login via that and won't give me any other option - despite the fact you can load the page up fine if you use ad/cooking blocking software/features and/or private browsing.

(I actually try not to use too much ad blocking, etc. but increasing it is becoming an exercise in frustration for many parts of the internet).
 
Rroff said:
(I actually try not to use too much ad blocking, etc. but increasing it is becoming an exercise in frustration for many parts of the internet).
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Why? The internet is a hell hole without an adblocker. I feel for indi content creators with no other revenue stream but too many of them don't curate their adverts properly.

"This one weird trick to earn £50,000 per hour, FROM HOME!!!1!" - **** off :mad:
 
It's probably so that bots won't crash the site and stuff and they can't be held to ransom by DDOS attackers. Just use cookies and tell the website to remember the login like any normal person.

When will it get better? I'm not sure what you mean the move towards everything using Facebook login etc is basically centralising all of your web usage, it's a total privacy nightmare by comparison.
 
It's so they can tailor propaganda more effectively.

I stopped using iPlayer when they started asking for DOB and postcode lol. They already have my address because I pay TV licence, now they want more real-time and personalised per-show data collection so they make you sign up for iPlayer. What a load of BS.

Same with your all4 app, they just want to milk data for analysis and data mining, most likely for better future propagandisation/mind control.

The problem is people keep using the apps. Is it really hard to just stop using an app for a few weeks? If everyone just stopped using iPlayer (like me) when they started asking for DOB/postcode then believe it or not they would have ditched the idea. We are actually in control here except people don't take control, and that's why we all get exploited.
 
mmj_uk said:
It's probably so that bots won't crash the site and stuff and they can't be held to ransom by DDOS attackers.
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Most DDOS attacks or other attempts to crash a site are either low level floods of ack requests or just use massive flooding of HTTP requests in general using a swarm of different hosts - user authentication can't protect against that because even if you filter out any one anonymous connection there will be another dozen to take its place.

asim18 said:
If everyone just stopped using iPlayer (like me) when they started asking for DOB/postcode then believe it or not they would have ditched the idea. We are actually in control here except people don't take control, and that's why we all get exploited.
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People are incapable collectively of seeing the bigger picture.
 
It's so they can gather information about you. Pretty lame IMO, especially when you buy something like a TV and aren't made aware what it's gonna collect about you.
 
I meant if you're serving video (particularly high resolution) it might be possible for large farms of computers such as computers infected with trojans to suck all of the bandwidth if there's no account/login procedure.
 
I don't mind registering for an account for things like this, but when 4oD can't even track what you've watched so you don't load the same episode again, it really winds me up.
 
mmj_uk said:
I meant if you're serving video (particularly high resolution) it might be possible for large farms of computers such as computers infected with trojans to suck all of the bandwidth if there's no account/login procedure.
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I believe iPlayer streams are hosted on CDNs and managing the traffic is down to the CDNs.

I think sucking bandwidth is different to DDOS. DDOS are individual requests which take server hardware time as opposed to bandwidth.

These CDNs have massive backbones, i think they can handle streaming to a lot of people. Also they will probably do multicast direct to ISPs. So its down to the ISP to dish out excess bandwidth notices to their customers.
 
asim18 said:
I think sucking bandwidth is different to DDOS. DDOS are individual requests which take server hardware time as opposed to bandwidth.
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DDOS will be a bit of both - the high request throughput can saturate the processing capabilities of hardware/routing devices on the server edge as well as the server itself but also uses up bandwidth - also reduces effective bandwidth especially in certain scenarios due to the way TCP works to try and mitigate congestion.

Some older attacks would for instance repeatedly request the same image to suck up bandwidth but ultimately it isn't a particularly effective attack compared to the alternatives though it is worth having mitigations for that but that won't be why sites require a user login.
 
billysielu said:
Yeah amazon keeps recommending I watch the stuff I just watched.
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Same but with items. Amazon keeps recommending items that I have already viewed!

Back to logins, Pinterest is damn annoying. I'm using a script called Pinterest without registration to get around it. Also, it seems that Google (images) is in bed with Pinterest.
 
Eurofighter said:
most phone have fingerprint sensors and cameras, suerly we should be using them for this.
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Most people don't like their biometrics connected to companies or the government. Irrespective of how it actually works (and that is assuming it is implemented properly and safely).
 
for sites like iplayer you can use a 30minute email account to register,
so do not need to create additional gmail accounts, maybe forwarding to your main one, in case it gets compromised.
 
billysielu said:
Yeah amazon keeps recommending I watch the stuff I just watched.
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They are also terrible in terms of recommending products (to buy) you've literally just bought from them.

Bought a pet food bowl? Amazon's top recommendations "for you" will be pet food bowls.

But Amazon, surely now I have one I don't need another? Amazon: "Look at this slightly different but also lovely pet food bowl. And this other one. OK if you don't want another pet food bowl right now I'll email you a different pet food bowl every single day for the next week. Also, when you buy a pet food bowl you can click here to tell everyone on Facebook you just bought a pet food bowl."

This is the pinnacle of 21st century human civilisation :p
 
seems far less websites allow you to check out as guest these days.

They can still collect as much information anyway? maybe they can't spam you with emails all the time though since you likely didn't consent to it unless you made an account.

they probably think youre more likely to come back if you have an account.

also noticed some websites have the save payment method option ticked by default which almost caught me out a few times already.
 
I've noticed recently that there are sites that look like they give you the option to refuse cookies but its a lie.

I just adblock those things.

I do subscribe to adb+'s "unobtrusive advertising" but needless to say apparently thats not sufficient for a lot of sites.

The industry is doing it to itself, if i can navigate to a site without a bunch of ads/cookie requests/annoying overlays it gets whitelisted. They can claim bleeding heart "but i need the ads" all they like but last time i checked youtube doesnt spam me with constant in your face ads and they're doing all right (i get maybe 1 or 2 ads a week and its either 5s skippable or no longer than 30s total)
 
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