[WikiEN-l] [Wikitech-l] Watchlistr.com, an outside site that asks for Wikimedia passwords

[Daniel R. Tobias]

On Thu, 23 Jul 2009 19:56:32 +0100, David Gerard wrote:

> > From: Sage Ross <ragesoss+wikipedia at gmail.com>
> > Date: 2009/7/22
> > Subject: [Wikitech-l] Watchlistr.com, an outside site that asks for
> > Wikimedia passwords
> > To: wikitech-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> 
> > I'm not sure what to do about this; it seems like a good idea but a
> > major security risk:
> > http://www.watchlistr.com/ is a site that creates aggregate watchlists
> > across multiple projects. See
> > http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Bounty_board#Transwiki_watchlist_too
> > l

Aggregators are a longstanding tradition in Web services; there are 
several of them around that get users to provide their passwords to 
banking and other financial sites (something with likely greater 
risks than one's Wikipedia password) so that they can show the user 
aggregated information such as net worth.  Social networking sites 
also often seek to get one's password to other social-networking, 
messaging, and e-mail services so that contact lists and status 
updates can be shared.

These services are at once very useful and very scary; one needs to 
have more trust in the sites that one gives one's passwords to than 
any web operator is likely to deserve.


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