[thelist] Protecting a paid membership website from password sharing

[Matt Warden]

On Mon, Aug 19, 2013 at 12:51 PM, Bob Meetin <bobm at dottedi.biz> wrote:
> Thanks for the suggestions on storage, several good solutions which I shared
> with the client.  Now comes a second concern.
>
> This particular service is to be a paid membership site, yearly or lifetime
> memberships.  The client is highly concerned that visitors will sign up,
> then 'cheat' and share their accounts with others, thus diluting the
> profits. Some thoughts:

I do not believe a technical solution to this exists. Accounts do not
get shared when people who own the accounts don't want to share the
information or access involved. Without knowing the nature of the
site, it's hard to suggest something. But you yourself identified that
nobody would share user/pass combos to their bank account, and that's
partially because they themselves value being the only one who can
access the account.

Successful: when your desire to keep account private aligns with the
users' desire to keep the account private
Not usually successful: when your desire to keep account private is at
odds with the users' desire to share or having nothing to lose by
sharing

-- 
Matt Warden
http://mattwarden.com


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