Username and Password

Fraser McGruer: 00:00:00

Hello and welcome to the Cognitive Engineering Podcast brought to you by Aleph Insights and produced by me, Fraser McGruer. I'm here with Nick Hare, Chris Wragg and Peter Coghill of Aleph Insights.

On this podcast we look at a wide range of topics from an analytical viewpoint and today we're asking for your username and password. Nick, what's your username and password?

Nick Hare: 00:00:27

Oh man. I can't be the only person in the world who feels like I am being asked to think of a username and password every sort of other day.

It's got particularly bad actually. We got an electric car recently and you know when you. The problem with the electric car market, I think they are fixing this.

When you go to the electric recharges on the motorway, they're all run by different companies and you have to set up an account. Yeah, like there's BP Connect and some other connection.

There's various, there's like five different companies and every single one wants you to give, you know, to set up an account on an app before you can buy their bastard electricity. Like, you don't have to do that with petrol. You just go in, you help yourself to the petrol and off you pop.

And I don't know why it is not the same with, you know, these things. So really irritating.

But, but it, you know, I, and then I was literally buying a coffee from a well known coffee chain before arriving here today and they said, they said, have you got, have you got, you know, an account with us, like a points account or something? And I thought, no, if it's a stamp on a card, I can just about cope with that. You get 10 stamps, you get a coffee. Of course it isn't.

Now it's like a loyalty scheme and you sign up to it and it'd be another. And I say, I can't cope with it anymore. I mean I, you know, they, everyone says you mustn't reuse passwords.

I think at some point I'm going to have to, I'll have so many accounts, it's just simply run through. I've run through all the combination letters but is anyone else picking up what I'm putting down here? Is this a thing that other people find?

Fraser McGruer: 00:02:05

I mean, of course we are because we're grumpy white middle class blokes entitled.

Nick Hare: 00:02:10

I'm sure this isn't a thing and.

Fraser McGruer: 00:02:11

I'm sure, and this is my point, we, yeah, of course, as we know, we don't like to go into that kind of territory and we're looking at what's underlying all this and sort of what are the solutions? What are the alternatives? We're in the business of coming up with solutions.

Peter Coghill: 00:02:24

Yeah.

Nick Hare: 00:02:24

Why can't we just go back to going to buying things? Why do we need all this shit anyway?

Fraser McGruer: 00:02:30

But I think, I suspect, I mean, I definitely know, I feel like that. And you guys, I'm presuming, well, that's why we're here talking about it. So hopefully you do feel like that.

Okay, well, how do you want to kick this off? Does one of you two want to chime in?

Peter Coghill: 00:02:40

Well, do we want to explore why it is such.

Fraser McGruer: 00:02:43

I think that's a very good point to start. Yes.

Nick Hare: 00:02:46

Why it is thus and so.

Peter Coghill: 00:02:47

Why it is thus and so and such and things. Yeah, well, there are some conflicting incentives going on. I've got a nice Greed versus speed. Love it way I've characterized it here. So it's.

Businesses aren't just in the business of selling their products anymore.

They will now want to harvest as much data about you, their consumers, as possible to either directly sell that data to other people or so they can tweak and improve their products to suit their audience better.

Fraser McGruer: 00:03:28

Apparently this is the point of Amazon prime, right. I think you're getting videos and films and stuff, but actually it's a massive, wonderful data hard.

Peter Coghill: 00:03:36

Well, there's another phenomenon there, I'd say that's more to do with like sunk cost fallacy, plus sort of of corporate buy in. This is more to do with like this is sucking your data up.

There's an also truism on the Internet that if a product is free, you're the product and that's what's going on here. Whereas the speed bit is the user doesn't want friction when they're purchasing stuff. So that's where there's a bit of conflict.

Nick Hare: 00:04:08

What do you mean by friction in this context?

Peter Coghill: 00:04:09

Friction in the sense that if you, you just want to, you just want to go and buy something.

Nick Hare: 00:04:13

Yeah.

Peter Coghill: 00:04:14

You don't want to put in, you don't want to have to get your card out, you don't want to have to put your email address in.

Fraser McGruer: 00:04:17

So there are many times, sorry, where I've chosen to buy something on Amazon where it's got a similar kind of price or maybe Amazon even slightly more expensive. But I can see the two there. But I'll go with Amazon because they've got my details, don't have to do that.

Peter Coghill: 00:04:30

So Amazon's got a good, good, good thing going on there because they've they've, they offer a single marketplace for absolutely everything, which leads to a sort of different kind of problem, which is the sort of the just buy on Amazon effect.

Nick Hare: 00:04:41

Yeah. Use a lock in.

Peter Coghill: 00:04:43

Because they are so comprehensive and so good at dominating your search engine query results that you'll end up just going with it for small purchases. What's the point in shopping around if it's on Amazon? Just get it.

Fraser McGruer: 00:05:00

Chris.

Nick Hare: 00:05:00

Sorry.

Fraser McGruer: 00:05:01

Yeah, Chris, you look like you were on the verge of saying something.

Chris Wragg: 00:05:03

Yeah, well, I don't know whether this is too fundamental at this stage or whether it broadens things too much, but one of the things that I've always thought about, but I particularly think about now, is this idea that my data has value and if something's free, you're being exploited in some way. And I really question fundamentally the idea that my data is valuable in some.

Nick Hare: 00:05:39

Yeah, I say yours isn't, to be honest.

Chris Wragg: 00:05:41

Right. Because I don't buy things.

But the point is the idea that I would be sold bespoke advertising and then hey, presto, I'd just open up my bank account and buy everything. Because this thing is so well tailored to my requirements just doesn't seem to hold true. And so the flip side, so this greed versus speed.

They're harvesting my data, which I don't believe has any value, but they're then potentially putting this barrier in the way of me actually paying for something from them. And very often, as you said, you will favor Amazon because they've got your details.

I'll favor anybody who, who I don't have to put any details in for, in the first place. Where you can, whenever there's an option, you know, purchase as guest and you don't get your loyalty points and all. Yes, please, that, that one.

Nick Hare: 00:06:37

Because you are probably using some aspects of accounts.

You're probably using, for example, your saved credit card maybe, or you're probably using your, your, you know, browsers saved version of something or you're using PayPal, which is kind of acting as a sort of credit card. So I, I think I just.

So I've looked, we've talked, I think we've touched on the whole sort of user experience side of this and some of the corporate incentives to do this. There are. I mean, I want to just look at what are the actual technical reasons why you need to have accounts. What do you get by having accounts?

Chris Wragg: 00:07:13

Right.

Nick Hare: 00:07:14

And so there's the first of all, identity.

If you want a persistent identity while interacting with any company, not just online, if you want Any of the benefits that come with that, obviously you are going to need an account. So you've got to prove that you're the same person as yesterday. If you want to see. So Chris is saying buyer's guest. Fine.

What do you do if you want to see? Well, where, where's my order at? What were my past orders? What did I buy last week? You know, you can't have any of that.

And from a you, from a kind of website point of view, you've got, you've got things like enforcing bans or rate limits. It's very useful to be able to track identity of someone who is using the website. Say nothing of things like preferences and syncing your data.

When you log in from a different browser, you might want to be the same person. So there's all kinds of good reasons why you want to do that.

You might remember, Fraser, such things as library cards and club membership cards and student ID cards or having a face. You've got a face.

If you go into a pub, as I'm sure you do, and if you say I'll have the usual please, which I bet you do, then you know you're using your face as the identifier. So this is not a weird new thing. It's very normal to want to track your customers identities and there aren't, it's not necessarily bad reasons.

Then there's sort of state, state elements. So this is like what is saved in that state. State just even within a single interaction there needs to be some recollection of state.

In other words, what have you clicked on? What's in your shopping basket, what. You know, if you're playing an online game, want to save your progress?

You know, if you want some loyalty points, where do they go? You know, there's, there's the whole element of where do I save stuff that is about me, you know, so there's a, there's got to be.

And of course if you're saving stuff, you need to know that's your stuff, you need to be able to retrieve it. So that's another reason why you need an account. So you know, if you do it, you can store it in local cookies and so on, but they're not very robust.

So. And pre digital versions, things like gym lockers file on your, you know that your doctor has things like loyalty cards and that sort of stuff.

Do you remember loyalty cards? And everyone was like, oh, they're just using it to steal data. Well now it's just, isn't it?

And then, and then you Know, and this is more of a kind of corporate side, but sort of attribution and accountability and so on. And this is things like if, you know, if you want to use a generated content.

So if you want to be able to get onto a website and comment and interact with people and, you know, be able to like things and know who's commented and know who's liked and if you was, you know, want to be able to moderate a forum or something and kick people off. So any of that kind of user generated content stuff that's, that's going to need an account as well.

So, you know, so I suppose I'm the last person on earth to defend evil corporations, but there are good technical reasons why actually there's a lot of functionality which I think users really expect, like Chris probably expects when he puts something in his shopping basket, switches tabs or goes to get a cup of tea. He probably be really annoyed if by the time he came back that had vanished.

Fraser McGruer: 00:10:28

Except of course we know he doesn't drink tea.

Nick Hare: 00:10:30

That's true. Here. A cup of tepid water. Yeah, yeah. Body temperature water which is absorbed moisture. That's true, yeah.

Fraser McGruer: 00:10:39

Okay. Yeah. I mean, I think one of the things you're saying is it's not necessarily that accounts has become a thing. That's annoying.

They've always been around. But we now live in a very digitized world. Growth of digitized commerce.

And so therefore what comes with that naturally is being asked to create accounts all the time, but also with a greater frequency, there's more inputs all the time that we come into contact with that. And it is really annoying. So that being the case, it's not new, but it is annoying.

We might have a matrix for this, as we sometimes do, but don't worry, listeners, we're gonna listen.

Nick Hare: 00:11:17

There's love matrices. We're not like you, Fraser.

Chris Wragg: 00:11:21

We're coming back to it.

Fraser McGruer: 00:11:22

Hey, yeah, yeah, exactly, yeah, we're coming.

Nick Hare: 00:11:24

Back to get back to.

Fraser McGruer: 00:11:26

Don't worry, we've not forgotten that. But we've got. Chris, you've got something. And then, and then Peter, then this matrix. So, yeah, go for it, Chris.

Chris Wragg: 00:11:32

You know, I was just gonna sort of think about the idea of. It definitely seems like there are more, more accounts that you have to, you have to develop than when we were in an analog world.

And yet I guess we still have a similar number of. You know, you would have gone into lots of shops previously, you would have purchased lots of things, you would have had lots of services.

So I wonder why it is that it feels like you're having to constantly enter details all the time. And I guess it's because.

Fraser McGruer: 00:12:06

It's because you are.

Chris Wragg: 00:12:07

Because you are. Right. And what formally happened was you had a personal interaction with somebody where they probably said, all right, where am I sending this to?

And you simply read out your, you know, you said, oh, I'm, you know, this is my address, this is my name for some reason.

Nick Hare: 00:12:27

Shop at Fortnum. Amazing.

Chris Wragg: 00:12:30

I'll package it up and have my man bring it around. Exactly.

Fraser McGruer: 00:12:34

Well, let's role play this for a second.

Chris Wragg: 00:12:36

Look, right, here's the example, right? So currently, the way I, the way I buy books is there's a bookshop at the top of the road, an independent bookshop.

I, I either ring the woman up who owns the bookshop or I walk into the shop and I ask for a book. She then, book, please.

Nick Hare: 00:12:56

Yeah, good morning, sir. She's a lady. Oh, yeah, you're being a lady.

Fraser McGruer: 00:13:00

Good morning, sir.

Nick Hare: 00:13:01

Hello.

Chris Wragg: 00:13:02

Hi, Kirsten.

Nick Hare: 00:13:03

He's in the West Country.

Fraser McGruer: 00:13:04

Yeah.

Nick Hare: 00:13:05

Good morning, my lover.

Fraser McGruer: 00:13:07

Morning, sir.

Nick Hare: 00:13:08

Good morning.

Fraser McGruer: 00:13:10

Hello. Hello, Chris.

Peter Coghill: 00:13:11

Nice to see you again.

Chris Wragg: 00:13:12

Yes, I'd like Mein Kampf by Adolf Hit. No, sorry.

Peter Coghill: 00:13:16

What? Another. Another copy.

Nick Hare: 00:13:18

What? Another? Yeah.

Chris Wragg: 00:13:19

Yes, I accidentally burnt the last one. Keep going, Chris. Yes, sorry. Anyway, enough role play. I simply tell.

Ask for the book, she writes it down on a bit of paper, orders the book on the system, and then she gives me a call when it's ready and I walk around and pick it up from the bookshop. Right. Now, that was presumably the way lots of the world worked, but that seemed that I continue to do that because I find that less hassle.

Fraser McGruer: 00:13:51

It's because you like the human contact. Yeah.

Nick Hare: 00:13:53

But you're giving her a name and a phone number, which are not dissimilar.

Chris Wragg: 00:13:56

Right, right, exactly. But for some reason that feels less burdensome to me. And you've passed your burden onto her. Right, right, exactly.

But I guess the way it used to happen was by a more natural means, which is you told somebody something and they, they wrote it down.

Peter Coghill: 00:14:15

And that every time you walk into a shop, you're authenticating that you are a person just by being there.

Chris Wragg: 00:14:19

Right, exactly.

Peter Coghill: 00:14:20

So you're right. The authenticate number of authentications probably hasn't changed very much the nature.

Nick Hare: 00:14:26

Yes, but the other thing that, that, you know, you don't get from a supermarket or something, a more normal shop maybe, you know, is, is. And it's the price of not having a personal account every time you walk into Tesco's Is, well, it's the same shop for everyone.

You know, maybe I just can't be bothered with the fruit and vegetables. I'd rather they weren't there. I don't have to walk past onions on my way to the microwaveable cheeseburgers.

So it's like, can I get, can I, can I rearrange the shop so that it's more suited to my needs? And I don't like the color of that wall. Can I change it red? Or like all this other school stuff I can do online, I can't do that.

Peter Coghill: 00:15:03

Have a pre populated basket. Yeah, you take stuff out of that you don't need.

Fraser McGruer: 00:15:06

Right. But also there's other costs. There's, you know, it costs more money, right?

You gotta have this person like physical place they've got, you know, for obvious reasons it costs more, but also it costs me more time to Chris. So.

Nick Hare: 00:15:18

Yeah, I mean what, what I'm saying is the analog shopping experience is replicable online, but it won't be as good an experience as what you actually are used to online. You know, in terms of all of that stuff.

Chris Wragg: 00:15:32

It feels to me like when large organizations take away the travel booking team or something like that, right? You used to just go, I'm going here, can you sort that out please? And they're like, aha, we've got saving here, right?

You, you can book your own travel now through this app, right? This is what, this is what these accounts and online service purchasing feels like. It feels like the people who used to.

Nick Hare: 00:16:01

The little man, the little man who.

Chris Wragg: 00:16:03

Used to put everything in a paper bag for me doesn't exist anymore. And I have to do that myself and I'm not happy about it. And I would rather pay more money to not have to touch paperbacks.

Nick Hare: 00:16:14

Yeah, interesting stuff.

Fraser McGruer: 00:16:16

I think, Peter, you had something, is that right?

Peter Coghill: 00:16:18

Yeah, just building on the contrast between the online world and the real life and the real physical world. There's still loads of bureaucratic processes in the non online world, non fully digitized world which are pain in the bum and need to be fixed.

So I'm thinking things like opening bank accounts, buying and selling houses. Buying and selling houses, a fucking nightmare.

Nick Hare: 00:16:40

Right?

Peter Coghill: 00:16:40

So assuming you're getting a mortgage, you're going to have to prove your identity to the estate agent, your estate agent you're selling a house to and the estate agent that you're buying a house from, the mortgage broker, insurance companies, solicitors, probably both sets. So there's like. And you're doing independent verification every time,.

Nick Hare: 00:17:02

Every time All these different but also.

Fraser McGruer: 00:17:03

Let's say it falls through and you have to do it again and then.

Peter Coghill: 00:17:06

You do it again.

Fraser McGruer: 00:17:06

Then six months later you would have to go through the same process, exactly the same stuff again probably to the same person.

Nick Hare: 00:17:13

So you'd like a login.

Peter Coghill: 00:17:14

So I'd love a login there. I'd love a. I'd love a UK ID card that I can just say yes, I approved. You see my details, here they are, you can see everything you need.

Nick Hare: 00:17:25

Starmer's got to you, isn't he?

Peter Coghill: 00:17:27

Well, I was always a big fan of the ID cards, I always have been.

Nick Hare: 00:17:30

I hate the idea of making them compulsory.

Peter Coghill: 00:17:33

I agree, yeah, I think they should be voluntarily but I'll be the first in the line for the convenience.

Nick Hare: 00:17:41

Also when the secret police walk around.

Peter Coghill: 00:17:43

They'll know especially, especially if they can be combined with online identity.

I'd love to de Google my identity so that I could use my own sovereign identity, self sovereign identity instead of a Google owned identity that if Google wanted to they could just turn it off and then I'd be paralyzed to.

Chris Wragg: 00:18:03

No more Peter.

Peter Coghill: 00:18:03

Yeah, my no access to emails, etc. Would be completely paralyzing. So I think yeah, there's loads of real.

Nick Hare: 00:18:11

Please don't switch Peter off Google.

Peter Coghill: 00:18:13

There's real world stuff that needs fixing. Could be half the amount of effort, half the amount of pain for very little effort.

If it was that said though, what we don't want is current online state where everything is completely fractured. Your account with Amazon's got nothing to do with your account with Google, it's got nothing to do with your account with Apple.

They're all completely unlinked from each other.

Fraser McGruer: 00:18:39

We need one centralized benevolent, not sent,.

Peter Coghill: 00:18:43

Not centralized because that's got.

Fraser McGruer: 00:18:44

So just Linked.

Peter Coghill: 00:18:45

Yeah, linked. Okay. So where you're where you only need to prove your identity once with one system and then it can act in multiple different.

Nick Hare: 00:18:55

I mean Google's password manager tries to do that, doesn't it? I mean password managers are a way of doing that. I mean the fact that you can, you know your credit card does a lot of that work is quite handy.

That's what enables you to buy something as a guest.

Peter Coghill: 00:19:08

Yeah but it's when you come on, when you find this, I really need this online service but it doesn't accept Google login only use it accepts Facebook login in a way it's because the.

Nick Hare: 00:19:19

Big technology, an account already exists with that name and you're like oh I must have bought something from here three.

Peter Coghill: 00:19:24

And a half years ago because the big providers have seen this as a really important opportunity and got their own little walled gardens for managing identity that don't really talk with each other.

Fraser McGruer: 00:19:38

Okay.

Peter Coghill: 00:19:38

But we won't go into the solutions just yet.

Fraser McGruer: 00:19:40

Okay?

Nick Hare: 00:19:41

Yeah.

Fraser McGruer: 00:19:41

So I know, I know what this situation needs. I don't want to biggie up too much, but I think you've got a matrix for us.

Nick Hare: 00:19:46

Oh, the what? The matrix of nuisance. Yeah, well, the, the. Sorry, the new account nuisance matrix or N A, N M. Yeah, the nanom. Yeah, it's gonna be big.

No, but anyway, the, we talked about.

Peter Coghill: 00:19:57

The fact that it's behind a paywall.

Chris Wragg: 00:20:01

Now.

Nick Hare: 00:20:01

The, we've talked about the fact that these things are annoying and there can be good reasons and bad reasons to have them, but actually, you know, the good reasons are to do with what we get, what we personally benefit as users. And then the bad reasons are often what the.

What the company gets, you know, and that some things which allegedly are a bit of both, like, you know, targeted advertising and then there's things like them selling your user data to third parties and stuff where we get no gain out of that whatsoever. So we've got bad, no functionality all the way through to cool functionality right, on the website.

And then we've got intrusive account management versus light account management. Right, You've got websites where there is a bit of account management, but you get a lot of cool functionality.

So that would include, I think, things like Steam, GitHub, Netflix, you know, yes, you do need to sign in, blah, blah, blah. But, you know, so that's cool functionality and some account management.

Fraser McGruer: 00:21:01

That's the best.

Nick Hare: 00:21:02

That's the best one.

Fraser McGruer: 00:21:02

That's the best.

Nick Hare: 00:21:03

Then we've got sort of cool functionality and actually no kind of sign in. Oh, right, okay. Yeah, yeah, this is. Right, you can be lighter than that. Yeah, Wikipedia or whatever. So think Wikipedia.

You, you know, you can, you can have an account, but you'll know what's stopping you using Wikipedia without one. Discord actually lets you do quite a lot as a guest.

You can join in, come in as a guest and, you know, join in people's discords and all of that sort of thing. Reddit, you can, you can. There's a lot of Reddit content you can have without any sign up. And you know, so, so there's that, I think is.

That's our kind of best quadrant really, is like. Is like. Well, as actually I get a lot out of this and I don't even need an account. That's very cool. And then we have our, our sort of.

No, very light account stuff, but sort of not very much functionality, which. Which tend to be things. I mean, there's quite a lot of websites actually where you go, like URL shorteners where you don't need to set up an account.

You go in, you give it a thing out, pop. They make money through, you know, an advertise, an advert that'll pop up. Or things like. There's an. What's my IP address? Which I use a lot.

It's really nice. Just go on, oh, what's my screen resolution?

There are these like websites and utilities where you go on and it doesn't do very much, but at the same time they're not asking you. So they're.

Peter Coghill: 00:22:23

They're all the narrow thing. Very well.

Nick Hare: 00:22:25

Yeah, exactly. So. But the very worst, of course, which we've swerved round to, is no functionality to speak of. Right.

But there's still a flipping sign in process and an account creation process. And I think this is what we think of when we think of account fatigue because it's things like local papers with a bloody paywall.

g report about cyber risks in: 2025

So annoying Smart home devices, literally, it's a light bulb, but you need to have an account to use it. Recipe sites that won't let you print a recipe unless you sign up with an account. So I think that is actually the.

Peter Coghill: 00:23:25

Worst corner of the Internet.

Nick Hare: 00:23:26

Yeah. It isn't actually account, it's the value. It's like, what do I get if I sign up here? You know, what am I getting back?

And if the answer is nothing, that's when it really feels annoying because you know that they're only making something.

Fraser McGruer: 00:23:39

It must be enough to annoy you.

Nick Hare: 00:23:40

One type. Yeah, but it's just a ratio. The value of what you get is so out of whack with whatever the cost is.

Chris Wragg: 00:23:47

Signing up the nuisance value seat as well, which you know full well is coming. But it's the idea of, hey, would you like my one pathetic thing?

Peter Coghill: 00:23:56

Here it is.

Chris Wragg: 00:23:58

Ah, wait a minute. Now you've got to enter a load.

Nick Hare: 00:24:00

Of click here to sign in.

Chris Wragg: 00:24:02

Yeah. Oh, and you're like, so.

Nick Hare: 00:24:04

So I think that's it. Like actually doing this. This made me realize that there are lots of good reasons why you want accounts.

And it's made me realize that I benefit in a lot of ways from the ability to do that to ability to have a sort of persistent identity online and stuff. But. But it's also revealed to me, okay, actually this is the thing that pisses me off. And to go back to kind of electric car charging it.

It's totally unnecessary for me to prove my identity to buy some electricity. I don't need to know. You know, it's not like, oh, I've got a very specific type of electricity I'd like. It's literally just the.

It's exactly the same as buying petrol.

Chris Wragg: 00:24:40

Yeah.

Nick Hare: 00:24:42

So it feels really annoying and intrusive to have to sign up.

Fraser McGruer: 00:24:45

Yeah. I like this, actually, because it is worth thinking things through.

Peter Coghill: 00:24:49

Right.

Fraser McGruer: 00:24:50

Which I've always trying to tell you guys, Right. You've got to analyze this stuff.

Peter Coghill: 00:24:53

Right.

Fraser McGruer: 00:24:54

Because actually when you dig into, rather than, you know, when you think it through and take the effort, you go, do you know what? Actually there's some good. Unless you're Chris, there's some real benefits I can get from all this stuff.

And when you've identified the source of the annoyance, it ceases to be.

Nick Hare: 00:25:12

And it rains. It rains pennies from heaven.

Fraser McGruer: 00:25:14

There you go. Has anyone got anything for the moment,.

Peter Coghill: 00:25:16

A little bit of blockchain solution. We're going to discuss, like, solutions.

Fraser McGruer: 00:25:21

Yeah, let's briefly.

Peter Coghill: 00:25:23

So I would. I'm going to start this by.

Fraser McGruer: 00:25:25

I still don't know what a blockchain solution is.

Nick Hare: 00:25:27

Don't worry about it.

Peter Coghill: 00:25:27

No, no, I'm not going to even mention blockchains. Nick mentioned blockchains. I'm not going to.

But I think you have to be wary of false profits on this because Apple, Google, shop, pay Facebook, everybody will say, oh, we've solved this. You just need to get such and such. You just need to sign in with X. Right. You need to sign in with Google. Sign in with Apple.

I'd be wary of that because they realized that this was a problem and there's a lot of user pain, but they kind of solved it for people by generating themselves a new business opportunity.

Nick Hare: 00:26:02

What we need is a single sign in that covers Facebook Google.

Peter Coghill: 00:26:05

And it's beyond the convenience, beyond the problem of lack of convenience because there is a fragmentation between the different identity providers because most deep big sites will now do all of them or multiple of them. So you only need maybe one out.

Nick Hare: 00:26:18

Of five and you get everything.

Peter Coghill: 00:26:21

Yeah, it doesn't matter because it's all tied to your email addresses ultimately, so it doesn't matter, but they get a lot of information out of that. Having a third party who's potentially in future adversarial to you, controlling your identity is extremely dangerous.

Your email address is probably the most important piece of your online identity. It's going to be, you're going to use it for buying car insurance, for house insurance. Also proving your identity to banks.

Even if you're using Monzo or online bank, if your email got turned off, you lost access to your email, you'd be really screwed. Proving your identity. So Google could just mess up or delete some data by accident and you'll be, you'll be in big trouble.

Fraser McGruer: 00:27:14

Or on purpose.

Peter Coghill: 00:27:15

Or on purpose, yeah.

So wary of tech companies owning controlling identity for the same reason I'm wary of the current plan for UK digital identity, which is again is a centralized approach where there's going to be maybe partly federated.

So it might be done at a county level or it might be done between government departments, but there'll be centralized databases containing the information about you.

This I'm worried about not because I don't think the British government's going to turn into a totalitarian state anytime soon, but because it generates a massive honey pot for people to attack and go after.

Nick Hare: 00:28:02

And do we think that Warwickshire County Council are going to protect it with top of the line cyber defense?

Peter Coghill: 00:28:08

They doubt it very much. So. So this. So that's one class of solutions which people are going after saying, oh, we just need to centralize it, we just need to centralize it.

I think that's a bad, bad model. The good model is not science fiction and it's something we can do now, which is generally classed as.

Generally called self sovereign identity, where you remain in control of all of your data and you might host it on your phone or your laptop or a combination of devices, you might host it on your own system. That run is run for you by a third party, but they have no access to the information because you control the access to the data.

Fraser McGruer: 00:28:49

But you I can trust with my own data.

Nick Hare: 00:28:51

So that's quite a good idea.

Peter Coghill: 00:28:52

Everything is fully decentralized.

Fraser McGruer: 00:28:55

I think you're on something here.

Nick Hare: 00:28:56

What if he left his data on a bus? He would totally do that.

Peter Coghill: 00:28:59

Well, it wouldn't be accessible to anyone because they would need a password or something that only you know, or biometrics only you have, etc. To get into.

Fraser McGruer: 00:29:06

I'm okay with biometrics, I think so.

Peter Coghill: 00:29:09

It'd be digital junk if somebody just came across it, but it could reside on a number of different factors so you wouldn't lose it, and you would probably buy a very cheap service or have one provided for you to keep backups of it. But it's only accessible when you allow access to it.

Fraser McGruer: 00:29:26

Alright, I think we'll have to stop there. You've been listening to the Cognitive Engineering Podcast brought to you by Aleph Insights and produced by me, Fraser McGrewer.

If you haven't already, please like and subscribe. We try to release an episode every week or two.

If there's any topics you'd like us to cover, please email us@podcastfinsights.com thanks as always for listening. Until next time, goodbye.