Re: A modest proposal for access authentication

Martin Hamilton ([email protected])
Fri, 17 Sep 1993 14:58:56 +0100 (BST)


Erik said:

> > > a) add a new kind of URL: FTPU://host/path
> > > this URL is like FTP: except that it assumes that the user will
> > > supply a user name and password, i.e., not anonymous access
> >
> > how about <ftp://[email protected]/whatever> ?
>
> Except that if you give me this URL, I get logged in as martin
> (assuming I know your password). The FTPU scheme says "log in as
> yourself". So you could have data readable by both martin and
> eostrom, and point to it with the URL
> <FTPU://genie.lut.ac.uk/whatever>
> and both you and I could get at it without my having to know your
> password or vice versa.

Sure, point taken. I was really thinking about the case where
you want to share ftp "accounts" - e.g. a guest ftp group in the
wuarchive ftpd. Sorry my brain's very frazzled today :-)