Re: Logging on to a web based application

Miles Thompson wrote:

At 06:38 PM 1/30/2004 +0000, Shaun wrote:

Hi, We are trying to develop a web based system where users a charged per office. I would be grateful to hear anyone's experience in creating such applications and how the users are managed. Our main concern is how we stop a client paying for one office use and distributing their password to other offices... Many thanks

Send Bruno 'round to break their knees! The PC is not an inherently secure device, so anything is a kludge. At present, for a paid newsletter, accessible only via the Internet, we do two things: 1. Limit logins - they get 10/wk. 2. Use Flash to run the login / display the news, with PHP backend authenticating and fetching/returning the news stories as an XML feed to the .swf.

I have to interject my opinion here. (I saw a tee shirt once that said, "everyone is entitled to my opinion" maybe I should get one:) Anyway. On this whole thing of trying to stop people from doing what you don't want them to do is a wast of time and only annoys your users. Now if there is a good reason to keep something secret then you only let people you can trust see it. For anything else anything other than requiring a login and password to view for paid content is just a wast of time. Here is why. If I can see or I can hear it I can copy it, and there is absolutely NOTHING you can do to stop me (short of holding a gun to my head that is). So use a simple login for users to view the content they paid for and don't make your honest users pay the price of putting up with annoying security mechanisms that the dishonest will always find a way around. Chris W. BTW IMO Flash is the most annoying on the net, far more so that pop adds.