eBay Retires MS Passport Sign-In

fihzy writes "eBay have announced they will retire Microsoft Passport Sign-In and .NET alerts. The Microsoft Passport Directory of Sites has been discontinued, too. Is Microsoft's Single Sign-On vision edging towards oblivion?"

FYI

[Anonymous Coward]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_.NET_Passpo rt

Re:FYI

[tourettes]

That should be http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_.NET_Passpo rt [wikipedia.org]

It never was.

[Fortran IV]

Microsoft's Passport sign-on was never a single-entry system, even within Microsoft's sites. Not long ago they started requiring a Passport account to post to the MS support newsgroups, so I reactivated an old Hotmail account. Surprise! Logging on to Passport thru their newsgroups did not get me into Hotmail; I had to enter the Passport account and password individually for each system, whether I entered them sequentially or simultaneously thru two browser windows.

As usual, Microsoft paid as little attention to their proposed standard systems as the rest of the industry. (Remember, Windows Notepad didn't get the Ctrl-O and Ctrl-S shortcuts until Windows 2000, even though other MS programs had them in Windows 3.x.)

about bloody time

[pluke]

That .NET Passport signin broke for me the first time i used it with ebay and then i was unable to set up an ebay account for an entire month.

Some don't want a hotmail-account

[Anonymous Coward]

I think some people are scared away because they believe that you need a hotmail-account to have a Passport. Not everybody want yet another useless, spam-filled webmail address.
The fact is that you can use your regular email with Passport, but I think alot of people believe these two services to be the same.

Maybe MS just need to relaunch the service. When it was created, Joe Average didn't have a gazillion different passwords. Things have changed since then.

Re:well

[MMMDI]

I'll bite.

<a href="http://www.yourlinkhere.com">Your text here</a>

Re:Good idea, bad implementation

[Baricom]

If was [sic] really important it would allow me...to change my password.

In its infinite wisdom, Microsoft did make it possible to change your password. Here's how:

1. Visit http://www.passport.com/ and sign in, if necessary. I even made it clickable here [passport.com].
2. Click "Member Services."
3. Click "Change my password."
4. Type your current password. Then, type your new password, and type it again to make sure you typed it correctly.
5. Click "Continue."

How do I become a .NET Passport Site?

[nmoog]

Certainly looks like MS have had enough of .NET Passport... Mouseover the "How do I become a .NET Passport Site?" on the directory site and it shows "http://www.microsoft.com/net/services/passport", but click it and your redirected to "http://www.microsoft.com/NET/default.aspx" with not a mention of .NET Passport.

Re:How do I become a .NET Passport Site?

[RupW]

Mouseover the "How do I become a .NET Passport Site?" on the directory site and it shows "http://www.microsoft.com/net/services/passport", but click it and your redirected to "http://www.microsoft.com/NET/default.aspx" with not a mention of .NET Passport.

I don't think the docs have ever been there - looks to me like they're putting that site together but put it live before they finished it yet. The best link to follow is the Getting started [netservicesmanager.com] link on the passport front page.

The Passport docs have been stale for some time. The download contains a *way* out of date configuration file and I think the code to refresh it is hosed to - you have to jump through hoops to update it manually.