Re: frame question

At 11:52 AM 11/18/97 -0500, you wrote:
>on 11/17/97at 10:20 PM, the Great and Grand  Wazir John Earl
><johnearl@lns400.com> said:
>
>
>
A formoer co-worker of mine started up his own ISP a few years ago.  I
>
have never been impressed with this man's integrity, so it gives me the
>
absolute willies to think about trusting my data to him.  Unfortunately,
>
their are people like him all over the net, and the policing is awfully
>
sparse.
>
>This makes sense, but would a company use this fellow as an ISP? 

One that doesn't know him.  I'm sure he has business accounts already.

>Would
>they be that silly?  As to private individuals in the ISP's area that
>might send out credit card orders...  well, after a few extra charges by
>him and his cronies to ISP customers the fraud people would have ferreted
>out his operation and he'd be among those caught.
>
>I believe it is important that be wise, yes, but not be leery.  As to the
>earlier comment of random packets; I have never received a packet not sent
>to me, at least I didn't recognise it as such.  Even if I did, I doubt I
>could read the card number and the expiration date and the name.  Add in
>the requirement that this rare occurrance has to actually happen in front
>of a dishonest person and you have a concern not worth the worry.

I don't think I made my point clearly.  The traffic would not go to the end
user, but rather could be interecepted by unscrupulous operators out on the
net.  Someone with sniffing equipment could potentially intercept all
traffic sent to his particular network segment.  But even if the ISP is
hhonest, he may not be competent.  There are clever folks who know how to
pitch a tent on someone else's  server and scan all traffic for the word
'password'.  When they see it, they grab the series of packets around that
word and store it for later use.   

No, the net is not a place to be trusting.


BTW,  anybody heard of the new 'cable-modems' that your cable TV operator
could soon be offering?  As I understand it, these modems place you in a LAN
with the cable-modem households in your neighborhood.  This means that some
one with 'sniffing' software could potentially see all of the traffic that
is headed to their vicinity.

Kind of gives a whole new meaning to Neighborhood Watch eh?

jte

>----------------------------------------------------
>Booth Martin     
>---------------------------------------------------
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>
>
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*********************************
* John Earl                     *
* Lighthouse Software Inc.      *
* 8514 71st NW                  *
* Gig Harbor, WA 98335          *
* 253-858-7388                  *
* johnearl@lns400.com           *
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