Can anyone tell me why a user's identity is so important? Sure, with perhaps a whole lot of algorithmic work, they might be able to serve me slightly better ads but is that all it's good for? It seems like a whole lot of furor over nothing.
I plan to address this in a future article, but here are two examples of many, many things that can go wrong: 1. throw up a customized phishing page mimicking a Google or FB login page where you've already filled in their username, fill in stars in the password box along with a message saying "Welcome back, shalmanese. Incorrect password." or something like that. The percentage of people falling for this will be dramatically higher than a naive phishing attempt (and there are studies on this.) 2. Surveillance will become greatly easier: the government can subpoena just about anyone to get information about you.