It’s a perennial theme for this blog perhaps, but last week we saw some online consultation sites that, once again, required you to register and log in before you could take part. As we’ve said before, unless you’ve got a really good reason for doing this, you’re wasting your time, reducing your participation rates and doing nothing to make your consultation more secure.
So it was interesting to see this on the BBC news site at the same time. Apparently the average UK adult now requires at least 15 different security codes and passwords for accessing information and services.
The article flags an interesting flip side that we hadn’t so much considered though. The more people are required to have these passwords and codes, the more likely they are both to use the same codes across different environments, and the more likely they are to write these codes down, making them less secure. This is not to mention of course the added likelihood of passwords being compromised through use in insecure sites.
So, to all those that think user registration is an essential pre-requisite of e-consultation, remember that you’re not increasing your own security, and your actually playing a role in a situation that is decreasing everyone elses!
