Just seen this over at Activewin. A new Gartner study comes to the not-so-staggering conclusion that Mr. and Mrs. America don"t like online authentication services such as Microsoft"s Passport and AOL"s Screen Name service. The reason: They don"t trust the two companies to keep their personal information safe. (what a surprise! - ED)
Given how the two companies are forcing their respective user name and authentication schemes down people"s throats, it doesn"t surprise me that consumers are choking on them. And given that consumers have a hard enough time trusting the Internet as a whole, I can certainly understand why they"re unwilling to trust AOL and Microsoft.
What I don"t understand is why these same consumers are so willing to trust their banks and other financial services companies with the same personal information. According to Gartner, 47 percent of consumers surveyed said they would trust banks to handle e-wallet services safely. Only 12 percent said the same thing about Microsoft.