DANIELSAYS.COM - Daniel's Legacy Computer Collections - Microsoft® Bob™ Exhibit

Microsoft Bob's Security

As shown on the Microsoft Bob sign in page, anyone can change any user's password, then optionally enter that account. Anyone can also add, remove, and reinstate user accounts before signing in to Microsoft Bob. That is frightening enough.

Now, take a look at even more potential havoc that can be wreaked inside the Bob Home.

Everyone, play nice, now.

Microsoft Bob's utopian concept is that you are supposed to be a good user and make private or password protected copies of rooms for your personal use, which you can modify to your liking.

You are supposed to only sign in with your account and behave and show respect in the shared rooms of the Bob Home, just as you would be expected to behave and be respectful in your own home or someone else's home.

Unfortunately, most of the time, it just doesn't work that way. Almost no one honors the "honor system" anymore.

Bob's "security."

Unlike Microsoft Windows, whose security can be set up so users can have accounts with their own desktop and file folders isolated from other users, the rooms in a Bob Home user account are shared. Any user can enter any shared room with the ability to add, modify, or delete program items, room decorations, and even delete rooms except for the Public Family Room, which can't be deleted.

Rearranging the furniture.

If a user makes changes to a shared room, those changes are seen by all the other users of the Bob Home. A second user can log in later, see those changes, and make other changes. The first user could return later to find the room altered to the second user's arrangement.

Imagine ten users living in the Bob Home, all with this capability....

Share and share alike? In this house?

The default shared rooms, except for the Public Family Room, can be made private by any user. If one user makes a previously shared room private the other users can access it unless the user who made it private changes it back to a shared room. Shared rooms can also be password protected by any user to allow only those with the password access to them.

The last user wins.

What it comes down to with Microsoft Bob is this, no matter what you do in shared rooms, any other user — including Guest — can come along later and change anything. The potential "chaos" even two users could create in Microsoft Bob is bad enough, but Microsoft Bob makes no provision for user administration.

Microsoft Bob plainly states in the screen shot above, "Note: If a room isn't listed, someone has deleted it from the home or excluded you by making it private."

If you cannot control user security, what is the point of having user accounts?

Would you allow the same access to your home the Bob Home does?

Back To Main Microsoft Bob Page

All titles are the property of their respective owners.