If it's on the Web, can you still say it's private?
Long story short: Intentia International puts information on its website but thinks its private because it doesn't tell anyone where the link is. Someone at Reuters finds the information and publishes it. Did Reuters do anything wrong? My take: Intentia is scrambling to cover its mistake. Don't put anything online and expect it to stay private unless it's behind a password - and even then, don't count on it if someone really wants to get it.
The theory of security by obscurity may soon come under legal review
read more at Wired.com: Rooting Around Site With Intent?
A Swedish company has filed criminal charges against Reuters, claiming that the news agency broke into its Web site to get access to an earnings report.But Reuters that the information was publicly available on the company's Web site, and said there was
read more at News.com: Reuters accused of hackingno substance
to the charges.
Comments
Something like this happened in the Netherlands a few months ago: the government put up some info on its website in a hidden directory two days before it went public, but a newspaper found out and thus reported on the content before it was 'allowed to'.
People _have_ to realize once something is on a webserver, it has become publicly available. If you truly want to keep it secret, use .htaccess or related techniques to hide it.
Posted by: Jor | October 30, 2002 08:02 PM