[Eril-l] Privacy and New EBSCO personal login feature - Google login

[Bob Pearson]

Our institution introduced “social authentication” (LinkedIn, Facebook and Google) as institutional single-sign-on options four weeks ago. My reaction was:

“I don't understand the full detail of [Sept 28’s] news about the theft of 50 million Facebook access tokens by hackers. I have generally avoided using social authentication (except each site's native authentication) and I am more resolute about avoiding it now. TBH, I laughed yesterday when I saw Facebook authentication on UoA SSO.”

But, our IT dept and EBSCO apparently think it’s ok. Personally, I’ll err on the side of paranoia for now.

Bob Pearson
Digital Access Librarian
The University of Auckland Library
New Zealand

From: Eril-l <eril-l-bounces at lists.eril-l.org> On Behalf Of Neyer, Linda S
Sent: Thursday, 1 November 2018 12:43 PM
To: Harper, Cynthia <charper at vts.edu>; Hinchliffe, Lisa W <ljanicke at illinois.edu>; Divan, Linda A <divanl at cedarville.edu>
Cc: eril-l (eril-l at lists.eril-l.org) <eril-l at lists.eril-l.org>
Subject: Re: [Eril-l] Privacy and New EBSCO personal login feature - Google login

Hi Lisa,
We’ve been testing it a bit, and the Google sign-on does not allow users to remotely authenticate to databases -- they can only sign in to their MyEBSCOhost ‘shopping cart’ where they save searches, alerts, articles, etc. It’s a two-step process: first, authenticate (for us, using EZproxy), second, log into your personal MyEBSCOhost account using either the login you create yourself or using your Google sign-on.

It’s still a little buggy – doesn’t seem to work consistently with all browsers. Also, if a user has already created an account, logging in with their Google sign-on doesn’t connect them to that account, it creates a new account.

On principle I’m not comfortable with all the data big tech collects on us and won’t be using the sign-on myself, except for demo purposes. However, our students will likely view it as a convenience to help them track their research more easily. If it helps them with citing their sources properly, then I think it will be useful. Of course, I may be missing something here. If so, maybe others can shed more light on the topic.

Cheers,
-Linda

---
Linda Neyer, Associate Professor, MLS|MS
Research & Instruction Librarian | Database Coordinator
Andruss Library 222
Bloomsburg University of Pennsylvania
570-389-4801 | lneyer at bloomu.edu<mailto:lneyer at bloomu.edu>


From: Eril-l <eril-l-bounces at lists.eril-l.org<mailto:eril-l-bounces at lists.eril-l.org>> On Behalf Of Harper, Cynthia
Sent: Wednesday, October 31, 2018 4:29 PM
To: Hinchliffe, Lisa W <ljanicke at illinois.edu<mailto:ljanicke at illinois.edu>>; Divan, Linda A <divanl at cedarville.edu<mailto:divanl at cedarville.edu>>
Cc: eril-l (eril-l at lists.eril-l.org<mailto:eril-l at lists.eril-l.org>) <eril-l at lists.eril-l.org<mailto:eril-l at lists.eril-l.org>>
Subject: Re: [Eril-l] Privacy and New EBSCO personal login feature - Google login

You’re right.  I was just knee-jerk reacting to the latest “feature” on EBSCO’s site that won’t work and our  patrons will wonder why, but maybe we can have a principled statement why we choose not to support it…

CH


From: Hinchliffe, Lisa W <ljanicke at illinois.edu<mailto:ljanicke at illinois.edu>>
Sent: Wednesday, October 31, 2018 3:47 PM
To: Divan, Linda A <divanl at cedarville.edu<mailto:divanl at cedarville.edu>>; Harper, Cynthia <charper at vts.edu<mailto:charper at vts.edu>>
Cc: eril-l (eril-l at lists.eril-l.org<mailto:eril-l at lists.eril-l.org>) <eril-l at lists.eril-l.org<mailto:eril-l at lists.eril-l.org>>
Subject: Privacy and New EBSCO personal login feature - Google login

I’ve changed the subject line because I’m going to shift the topic a bit. Am I the only librarian who is a bit alarmed at the idea of authenticating to a library resource through Google and the privacy (like there is none?) implications? Someone please tell me I’m misunderstanding and explain that this is actually in keeping with the NISO Privacy Principles or something?

Lisa


**********************************************************************************************************
Lisa Janicke Hinchliffe
Professor/ Coordinator for Information Literacy Services and Instruction, University Library
Affiliate Faculty, School of Information Sciences
University of Illinois, 1408 West Gregory Drive, Urbana, Illinois 61801
ljanicke at illinois.edu<mailto:ljanicke at illinois.edu>, 217-333-1323 (v), 217-244-4358 (f)
**********************************************************************************************************

From: Eril-l [mailto:eril-l-bounces at lists.eril-l.org] On Behalf Of Divan, Linda A
Sent: Wednesday, October 31, 2018 2:30 PM
To: Harper, Cynthia <charper at vts.edu<mailto:charper at vts.edu>>
Cc: eril-l (eril-l at lists.eril-l.org<mailto:eril-l at lists.eril-l.org>) <eril-l at lists.eril-l.org<mailto:eril-l at lists.eril-l.org>>
Subject: Re: [Eril-l] New EBSCO personal login feature - Google login - and WAM

We tried the Google authentication yesterday on-campus (not using EZproxy) in Firefox and Chrome and it worked fine.

After seeing about problems with remote access, I used VPN to go off-campus (so we first authenticated through EZproxy to get to EBSCO ebooks) and in Firefox got a blank screen, in Chrome an error message.

Linda Divan
Library Systems Co-ordinator
Centennial Library
Cedarville University
251 N. Main St.
Cedarville, OH  45314

937-766-7843
divanl at cedarville.edu<mailto:divanl at cedarville.edu>

On Wed, Oct 31, 2018 at 3:20 PM, Harper, Cynthia <charper at vts.edu<mailto:charper at vts.edu>> wrote:
So, after all our work making sure users can create personal accounts on EBSCO ebooks when we’re using WAM, we now see that they’ve enabled Google authentication.  And of course, it does not work with WAM (redirecting host site 0-auth-ebsco-zone.librarycatalog.vts.edu<https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=http-3A__0-2Dauth-2Debsco-2Dzone.librarycatalog.vts.edu&d=DwMGaQ&c=HS1CjnFyfzCL6mp0nkGYYw&r=x3WD-kxlrre-X6msdfrKCcl0xH5zliYcTd9f4iDeT4U&m=8myANw1ux_2fBfXLi6SVkpQ9YdtbvoPlLzNUxLVDhJo&s=0xhDkobV63Q25JfwIeKLpJVmVxTGufkk2SoP7j468M0&e=> not recognized.)  So I’m wondering if I turn off the WAM proxying of auth.ebsco.zone would Google authentication work????  I’ll ask EBSCO, but I thought I’d ask if anyone else has had a chance to look at this???

Cindy Harper

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