I am a Web Designer

A new site, hellomynameise.com launched yesterday. I found out about it via a forum post by someone I otherwise respected, so had no reason to think negatively about the site or it’s credentials. So I popped along to see why this person thought it was so great. Claiming that it ‘was the future’ seemed a bit extreme but certainly got my attention.
The site itself looked like a typical web2.0 startup, offering free beta access to those who sign up for this open-id style service, and a vague promise of their friend sharing hardware (which to me seemed unecessary given that the devices they targetted have this facility built in). All looked very typical, but I was uneasy. Still I began the signup process, but for some reason I simply couldn’t bring myself to submit… The thought of sharing my social I’d login information with a third party website seemed too big a trust to give to a startup website, no matter who told me about it.
Today I have learned that many of those who did sign up for this service have found that mynameise has used their social network login credentials to post spam messages to their friends list, forum posts and twitter feeds!
It’s sad that in this day and age people still fall for this type of scam. Although this Is a new and clever iteration of an old-school scam, it still would ultimately fail if one golden rule was adhered to: DON’T give out your password!