On Sat, 22 Jan 2005 23:24, Andrew Errington wrote: > I need the PIN as plain text to send to the server, but I > don't know enough to make it safer (assuming it needs to be). imho, it doesn't need to be any safer than you have it now. Certainly you don't want to have a pgp passphrase or similar stored on the machine.
What are the consequences of it taking an unfortunate fall? Not much, Somebody can discover what books you have out of the library, what a discovery!! Somebody can reserve a book, pretending to be you. 'nother big deal because you don't have to pay for it until you pick up the book. You can explain to the staff what has happened and they will simply put the book back into circulation. Most of the time the staff are pretty good about establishing identity if you don't have your card with you. Somebody can get into the premium databases pretending to be you. afaik that's another big deal, because they are gratis. Can anybody think of any other risks? None the less I'd take a bit more care with your library card than you did in the past. The risk with the public library is that it is only too easy to simply leave books which you have read on the returns counter only to have them picked up by a thief before they are removed form your card. You end up having to pay for the replacements. They can be expensive, especially for folk with our interests. I know! bye the bye, I'd love to help with testing the script. -- Sincerely etc., Christopher Sawtell
