First Search Login-- Clarification about security

Wilfred [Bill] Drew drewwe at snymorva.cs.snymor.edu
Wed Jul 24 17:53:21 EDT 1996


After a couple of private messages to me I think I need to clarify the
"security" issue in the HTML coding I wrote.  The login and passwords
are 
NOT secure from the user that can display or view the source of the
page.
My intent was to provide autoamted access to FirstSearch, not to hide
the login and passwords.  The only alternative I had was to list them on
our FirstSearch page as I did for the page for a FirstSearch telnet
session.

Now why did I do it this way?

First, OCLC's scripts will not work on our server.

Second, I can write HTML and even some primitive JavaScripts but do not
have the time to learn perl or cgi for our server.

Third, no one at our computer center has the time either.

What OCLC should have done is to allow access by domain name.  That is
how Britannica Online and many other vendors do it.
--
Wilfred Drew (Call me "Bill") Serials/Reference/Systems Librarian
SUNY College of Ag. & Tech.;   P.O. Box 902;  Morrisville, NY 13408-0902
Internet: DREWWE at SNYMORVA.CS.SNYMOR.EDU
Phone: (315)684-6055 or 684-6060 Fax: (315)684-6115 
Homepage: http://www.snymor.edu/~drewwe/
Not Just Cows Homepage: http://www.snymor.edu/~drewwe/njc/
LibraryLinks: http://www.snymor.edu/pages/library/
--


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