You can skip Microsoft account login

Traditional desktop applications usually do not require users to login. Today, modern applications need to sync a lot of data which is not possible without user identity knowledge. It does not mean that application needs to know exactly who you are in law language. It just needs to know which devices owns the same user. When you read news on your cell phone you do not want to read the same ones on your PC again. This is what Microsoft account allows us to do. It provides us a random anonymous number. After login on your new device, we know that you want to show the same content as on device assigned exactly the same number. Microsoft account has also absolutely nothing to do with banking or money (unless you want to buy an application). The account itself is totally free. It is also strongly secured. You have always under control what kind of information associated with Microsoft account you provide to application. The Feed Viewer requires lowest possible knowledge. We really care about anonymous number only. However, many users do not have a clue about Microsoft strict privacy policy and do not want to login for many different reasons. To meet their needs the Feed Viewer now allows skipping the Microsoft account login. On the other hand, this is a challenge from security perspective of our cloud service and reason why this was not allowed since the beginning.

Monday, March 24, 2014