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It is really nothing new to offer up credentials to some third party who promises to act benignly on your behalf.

When my niece was about 10, so let's call it 2005, she wanted to access some Barbie service. And I think it was the legit Barbie, mattel.com-affiliated website for children.

So she navigates there, and gets a login screen that wants her email credentials. Like from yahoo.com. I don't know why--to add her to a list or something? Was it an early "federated identity" login that I wasn't aware of?

And my jaw dropped open as I looked at what they were trying to do and I shouted "That's phishing! Don't ever do that!" and I force-closed all the windows and handed her over to her parents.

And looking back, I almost had a twinge of regret because I had come to find out that the Barbie service was not some Russian hacker but actually Barbie just asking to log in to her email, and it was totally normal for thousands of kids. So was I the bad uncle for stopping her in this regard?


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