On Wed, 13 Mar 2002, Dave Hoover wrote: > Philippe 'BooK' Bruhat wrote: > > > >We are not talking e-commerce security here. If your password get > stolen > >or sniffed or whatever, it's not a big problem. > > Sure it is. What's the point of having passwords if it's not a big > deal if they get stolen? > > >But having password protected submissions would at least prevent errors > >(woops, wrong click), and the usual mischief (which is bound to happen, > >if these competitions continue to grow). > > I don't see how passwords would prevent wrong click errors. The "usual > mischief" includes the sniffing and stealing of passwords. >
I think you're being too clever, Dave. Even plain text passwords would prevent the "I wonder what happens if I click on someone else's name" type of misattribution, which is probably the most likely sort. Of course, an expert could try and sniff passwords or whatever, but that's much less likely. There is a genuine downside of plain text passwords, that someone will try and use a sensitive password for Perl golf; they would have to be warned about that. -- Stephen Turner, Cambridge, UK http://homepage.ntlworld.com/adelie/stephen/ "This is Henman's 8th Wimbledon, and he's only lost 7 matches." BBC, 2/Jul/01
