Re: Privacy

[Josh Sled <jsled asynchronous org>]

On Tue, 2004-03-16 at 17:11, Charles Goodwin wrote:

> On Tue, 2004-03-16 at 15:28, Linas Vepstas wrote:
> > Yes, this was discussed to death on the gnucash mailing lists. 
> > -- encryption is not enough if your kid can still delete your data files.
> >    The point is really access control, not encryption per se.
> > -- one should stick to OS-provided security mechanisms for many good reasons
> 
> As you imply, this is the job of the OS and not of the application.

That was the argument on gnucash-user.
http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.comp.gnome.apps.gnucash.user/10141 is
probably the best entry-point into the thread, there.

> And besides, if somebody was that concerned about privacy they simply
> would log out when they're finished and keep that user account private
> and give the (presumably) family members their own user accounts.

That -- very reasonably -- doesn't work for a large class of users.  I
hate logging out ... it stops my music, causes me to miss IRC scrollback
buffers, kills my IM client... all sorts of badness.

> Creating yet another user really won't make the accounts more secure. 
> Just more obscurely located.  I thought only MS practiced security
> through obscurity? ;)

Sure it will; as per your previous statement: using the OS ACL
mechanisms is a very valid access-control mechanism, and is the one that
should be respected.

I think the idea is more a "gnome-standard" way to allow the paradigm of
"use a different user for that purpose".

In any case, it looks like there already is:
http://sourceforge.net/projects/xsu/ though I hate it when a project's
homepage goes away, or doesn't exist in the first place. :(

[BTW, there's nothing wrong with security through obscurity ... it just 
 can't be the _only_ security you have.  Otherwise, pile on the 
 obscurity to slow 'em down. ;) ]

...jsled

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