"60 Minutes" and Web Site Evaluations

[Thomas Dowling]

> I'm going out on a limb here because I did not see the report.  It
was
> summarized for me by my supervisor, who had some questions.  He
mentioned
> that the internet 'expert' said that one way that Leslie Stahl's page
could
> be perceived as having greater credibility was the fact that it was
being
> served from the CBS.COM domain.  Did that in fact happen in the
report?

No.

A purported *e-mail message* from Leslie Stahl was given greater
credibility because Andrew Kantor configured his copy of Netscape to
use smtp.cbsnews.com as his SMTP host.  The mail header on the message
he sent then indicated it had come through that server.  In the
sysadmin community this is a known shortcoming of SMTP (as just
described to me by my sysadmin); plugging this hole seems to require
firewalls, although "maybe the next version of sendmail fixes this."  

It's enough to make one get PGP.

Thomas Dowling
Ohio Library and Information Network
tdowling at ohiolink.edu