Yahoo OpenID Plan Spotlights Privacy Issues

Yahoo is planning on adopting a new log-in system that allows the user to log in only once, on one website, then have all their yahoo accounts logged in on other websites. It works like this: when Yahoo users go to a site using the OpenID protocol, they will either see a special Yahoo log-in field, or they can type "yahoo.com" into an OpenID field to start the log-in process. The Web site will redirect the user to Yahoo to log in, and then Yahoo will forward the user's identifying information back to the Web site. Of course this is a relief for those people who used to waste a lot of time log-in on multiple yahoo websites. But on the other hand, this OpenID system may cause a lot of privacy issues. For instance, if one of the Yahoo websites gets hacked, it means that they'll access your private information autamatically while you could have prevented that from happening if you had had the choice of log-in on that specific website. According to Lane, it's like putting all your eggs in the same basket. Plus, you might not want to share the same log-in info on all the Yahoo websites yuo visit (like Wall Street Journal vs. Nerve.com).
In my opinion, I think it is everybody's choice to use the OpenID thing although I know that if Yahoo finally decides to use it, many people will use it without knowing what it really means and many of them will use it just because it's "new". Sad.

Source: Top Tech News

Would e-voting encourage more people to vote?

In many countries the electoral process is marked by the absence of a significant number of voters which makes the results less democratics because they do not represent the opinion of all the inhabitants of the country. However, many countries, including England, have adopted an electoral process that they think it would encourage people to vote and make elections more democratic. A recent study shows that e-voting encourages people to vote because they do not have to move in order for them to vote. In addition, it takes less time to vote because they can simply send a text-message or online vote and go on with their daily business. The Diaspora also benefits from that because they can send their votes online without having to fly to their country in order to vote. In England, e-voting is one of the voting options that British citizens enjoy.

Source: BBC News