Sun 2004-06-13 18:38, Bob Lawrence (3:712/610.12) wrote to Rod Gasson:

 >> and money exchange is attracting criminals.

 RG>> And what is your solution to this? Ban internet banking? close
 RG>> down all online stores?

 BL> My solution is a different system; one where every user is logged,
 BL> well-known, and easily traced back to his front door... just as the
 BL> FBI and NSA has operating at present for the sole benefit of the USA. 
 BL> It would need a central hub, or perhaps a few hundred hubs around the
 BL> world, and just as access is impossible at present without a fully
 BL> qualified address, then we need a fully qualified sender, complete
 BL> with telephone and an actual address.

I don't think any such system could be agreed on internationally.

Things like identity theft would also cause some major headaches.

Also, such a system doesn't easily translate to shared computers, or public
libraries, or public wireless Internet.

Also, I think people generally recognise that a certain amount of anonymity
can be a good thing.  If everyone knew that in the back of their minds that
every online purchase they ever made could be tracked back to them, I've no
doubt there would be less online trade.

Also, none of the above guarantees the security of the underlying software
running the show.

 BL>  Fido ran like that for years, and the few times a node crashed, it
 BL> was a simple matter ot reroute without losing mail. It would be even
 BL> *easier* nowadays. The satellites themselves could be the hubs (or
 BL> the cable terminals, or Telstra, locally).

I think you over-estimate Fido.  For starters, commercial activity over
Fido (being an amateur network) was/is discouraged and in some cases (eg.
encryption, from memory) prohibited by Policy 4.

Also, it was/is fairly rare that anyone's personal details were
sufficiently verified by a FidoNet sysop before they could send mail to
other nodes.

Also, from personal experience, rerouting Fido netmail can often cause
messages to be lost, either having been marked "sent" when they
were not, or ending up in a routing loop.
 
 RG>> Why limit this to just the internet? Banks and shops have been
 RG>> good targets for criminals for as long as they've existed.

 BL>  The *reason* to make the Net more secure, is so that people will use
 BL> it, securely. It's a broken system... so fix it. What else can you
 BL> expect of a system set up by uniwankers?

Poor design decisions leading to gaping security holes in Microsoft
products are probably the single biggest contributor to some of the more
broken parts of the Internet today.  In particular, unpatched holes in
Windows (particularly 2K & XP), Internet Explorer, older versions of
Outlook and IIS all provide enough compromised hosts for launching DDoS
(distributed denial of service) attacks and huge spam runs.

Compromised hosts need to be taken seriously, and taken offline. 
Unfortunately some large ISPs (eg. Telstra) have a tendency to ignore them,
probably partly due to policy, ineptitude, or profit, or a combination of
all three.

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