<font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="2">Originally posted by NoStressHere:
Privacy and information is a constant tradeoff. Now that a few people have sent notes to NW, they will probably shut down this great tool. I really do not think anyone could find my records, and really do not care if they do.
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Yes, privacy and comfort of obtaining info are at odds. What I suggested to them to do was this: the seat assignments are displayed only to a user who is signed and at the same time the requested record locator must be a part of this person reservations.
I do not think they are going to shut down this tool. I think they'll make it more secure while maintaining its functionality.
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Side note regarding the calculations above. I think the poster said you could do 10 requests per second. I did some checking on how long it take a request to come back and it was 2-3 seconds for bad ones, and 7 seconds for a good one. So, you are then looking at 8 hours to find ONE good record.
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C'mon, marry a smart guy, php, curl, and a script is born that can send those get requests at rate 10 per seconds. The results for each request would be obtained within 8 seconds.
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Yes, the privacy for someone has just been released. But guess what, if I go to the airport I can figure out much more about who is flying on a plane. So what?
That boarding pass you are using to bookmark your book, or just stuck in a seat pocket or are standing there in line gives me enough information to get into your records. And just think about the havac that could be caused.
Folks, there is a difference between privacy and reality. Knowing that someone named John Doe is flying on a certain day is no big deal unless you maybe KNOW who John Doe is?
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That's that person's negligence. Nothing NWA could do about it. But what NWA should not do is to leave the door not locked on their web site.
[This message has been edited by Jano (edited Mar 05, 2004).]