Originally posted by Randy Petersen:
<font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="2">What I want to comment on are the instances whereby a few members had their user accounts hi-jacked. This has happened before (just two or three times in the last five years). In each situation, we have believed that the hi-jack was caused by another member inappropriately having access to a users password or other cause.
. * . * . *
I have the assurance of my tech team assigned to FlyerTalk, that it has not happened because of a security lapse on our end. There are just four people in the world that have access to FlyerTalk protocols and I'm one of them. The tech team has no interest at all in the FlyerTalk Community other than to make sure it works right for its members. We change passwords from time to time and in each incident of a hi-jack, scour our Weblogs and other data at our disposal and that of our hosting company. We have high security on our servers because of a relationship we have with American Express and mileagemanager.com. In fact, we use the very same data house that American Express uses for some of their services. We know the security standards are very high for this.
We also know that the standards of the members of FlyerTalk are very high and continue to run FlyerTalk with these standards in mind. We've never - and will never release the back end of FlyerTalk to any other party than ourselves.</font>
(Emphasis added.)
I am most gratified to learn of the continuing commitment to the highest standards -- not that I expected anything less given what I've observed over the past two years -- and of the segregation of technical and "editorial" functions. This is analogous to the two-man rule for certain keys, information, and codes used by naval officers, or the conflict-of-interest rules applied to government employees, contractors, attorneys, accountants, corporate officers, and others.
By no means is it a slam on our hard-working
moderator corps, and if anything I've posted regarding this brouhaha could be implied as being unappreciative of your commitment in time and in emotional stress, I sincerely and deeply apologize. (I also hope that my favorite numbered colleague has no hard feelings!) (Gaucho100k, I think I’m a closeted quasi-member of the PPP
, but what does it stand for? And what is OP-FOP??)
Finally, I am truly happy that it will not be necessary to make a federal case out of this.
See 18 U.S.C. §§ 1030, 2511 & 2701.
[Not that it would affect me personally; I'm a short-timer with only 11½ working days left.]
[UBB edit.]
[This message has been edited by SPN Lifer (edited Feb 03, 2004).]