Asa Dotzler wrote:
> Ben Clinger wrote:
>
>
>> Pristle wrote:
>>
>>
>>
>>> The link,
>>>
>>> http://home.netscape.com/communicator/v4.5/passwords/doit.html
>>>
>>> was once the location to enable or disable profile passwords on
>>> a shared machine. It is no more. Anyone know where this feature
>>> can be enabled/disabled now? I am keen to re-enable the option
>>> on a new install for both 4.7x and also 6.1
>>>
>>>
>>> Cheers,
>>>
>>> Paul
>>>
>>>
>>
>> Well, the profile password feature of the 4x series is at
http://home.netscape.com/browsers/4/passwords
>>
>>
>> The profile password feature will not be implimented in the 6x
>> series due to an engineering decision <?> that the password
>> feature provided little if any real security and therefore was
>> not necessary, blah, blah.
>>
>
>
> um, no.
>
>
>
>> A bunch of us have asked for it <yep> and occasionally repeat the
request.
>>
>>
>
>
> and some people actually stepped up with a patch <yep> and then a
> few additional patches.
>
> For me, it's not a matter of real security, 'cause with Windoz,
>
>> it's a matter of opening up Explorer and just going from there. It
>> keeps the kids from changing my settings so they can play their
>> on-line games. It keeps me from having to delete unwanted
>> bookmarks, et cetera. So to answer your question, with 6x, it
>> ain't gonna happen.
>>
>
>
> I doubt that you really know what is and isn't planned in Netscape
releases.
> Please don't state your guesses as fact to new people coming into
> these channels looking for help.
>
> You could instead point this guy to the bug
<http://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=16489>
> that has the Mozilla implementation of this feature and explain
> to him that developers have been working on it and that it is very
> nearly completed and that it has a decent chance of becoming an
> option for vendors of Mozilla-based browsers sometime soon and
> that it will probably be available for testing as an XPInstall in
> the next few days if all goes well.
>
> I won't use this feature and I don't think that vendors of
> Mozilla-based products should distribute this feature but that's
> the beauty of open source, if someone has an itch the code is
> avialble and they can scratch it.
>
> --Asa
>
>
Having looked at the link, enough people have been bitching that they
have finally given in.
>From that page:
This is very hard to do in a way that is not easy to get around. I can't
see it being worthwhile without encrypting many files within the profile
dir. Mail folders can be huge, although it may be posible to
encypt/decrypt just the database file for an account fairly quickly.
Either way, there are a lot of files and subsystems involved in this.
I'll need opinions from others.
Another response was that it was an easy thing to do. Even the engineers
can't agree with themselves. Anyway, it's good to see that work has/is
being done on this issue.
Ben
