Startup Vidoop Has A Plan To Monetize User Logins | Hacker News Reader

Startup Vidoop Has A Plan To Monetize User Logins

gigaom.com

12 pointstransburgh12 comments

Some nitpicking:

"Data security is just hard to provide, and thanks to hackers, even harder to protect." Wait, the 'hackers' are the reason it's hard to provide, right? So why the "even harder to protect" part?

Later there's the typical focus on stock price instead of market cap. This is the "ooh, shiny!" school of business writing.

"This curbs the riskiest kind of hacking" Please reduce hacking risk; wear a helmet.

You know what this reminds me of? A local newspaper article. This writer isn't smart enough to be on the web; Om should fire him.

I'm sorry, everyone. Just had to get this off my chest.

This is similar to CAPTCHAs being used to scan books. Smart idea. Wouldn't be surprised if that's where it got its inspiration.

or hotcaptcha or petcaptcha...

http://www.hotcaptcha.com/

http://research.microsoft.com/asirra/

I had the same thought.

How is this secure? There are only 15 choose 3 different possible logins for each screenful of pictures. That's 455. So you have a 1/455 chance of just guessing the right one? Or does order matter? Maybe that's what's happening. 15 permute 3 is 479,001,600.

Even then, how is would that be more secure than a password?

No, the order does not matter. You can enter code from the three slides in any order. I've checked at their website.

Had you actually read through or watched the video, you'd notice that you can't just take someone's username and start guessing. They have a second layer that requires "out of band" authentication.

http://www.vidoop.com/vidoop_how.php

Also, it's more like 12 choose 2 but you cannot enter those two easily since: they change all the time and they're embeded in pictures.

I misread 12 as 15. But the blog post says you pick three images. So 12 choose 3, or 220.

OK, if you were willing to sit through their video, why don't you tell us about this second layer?

Wow, that is really really really stupid idea. There are just so many things wrong with it.

It's good because instead of tracking your keystrokes, spyware will have to take screen shots of your web browser whenever it notices a login form in the web browser.

What it might do is solve a lot of security issues as a side effect-- by forcing users to stop using their single password on every web site, which is what many or most users do right now. Although, now they'll just use the same three image categories, unless they really want to memorize many sets of them for different sites, and competing visual authentication systems.

What it really does is allow companies to pay money for showing pictures. This isn't to help consumers, since this forces users to take the additional step of thinking every time they login. It's to make deals with ad agencies.

hey that's pretty cool

The beauty is, you have to remember your passwords... so you'll have an image of a grande frappuchino permanently embedded in your head, the next time you drive by a Starbucks. Consumerists, rejoice.

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