Disclaimer

The content of this blog is my personal opinion only. Although I am an employee - currently of Nvidia, in the past of other companies such as Iagination Technologies, MIPS, Intellectual Ventures, Intel, AMD, Motorola, and Gould - I reveal this only so that the reader may account for any possible bias I may have towards my employer's products. The statements I make here in no way represent my employer's position, nor am I authorized to speak on behalf of my employer. In fact, this posting may not even represent my personal opinion, since occasionally I play devil's advocate.

See http://docs.google.com/View?id=dcxddbtr_23cg5thdfj for photo credits.

Friday, January 20, 2012

AAdvantage versus Account Aggregation

I just learned that American Airlines' AAdvantage frequent flyer program has sent cease and desist letters to account aggregators.

(This shows how often I check my AAdvantage miles balance - only when I am planning vacation.  It also shows exactly why I depend on an account aggregator - for all of these bleeding accounts...)

Now, perhaps I am exposing myself to hackers because I admit that I use an account aggregator.  Single point of failure, and all that.

(By the way, I would be much happier if the aggregators had read-only access to my accounts - if they could only see balances, but not change passwords.)

But the overall thing is: there are, I have, too many bleeding accounts. Too many blinking passwords.

Account aggregators are one major tool to manage this.

If a company will not let *any* account aggregator access them, well, then I do not need to be a customer of that company.

I was considering dropping American Airlines anyway, because of their financial position. This is just more incentive.

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Heck, if AAdvantage was implementing better security, such as captchas, I would be happy.But sending "cease and desist" letters - that's garbage.

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