[Gllug] identd -- any point?

[Ian Norton]

All in all,

i feel identd has good intentions, yes, if everyone ran it then it would be
helpful, and if everyone that ran it was trusted and setup correctly then the
world would be an easier place to track down skiddies and irc flooders,
however, real life really isnt like this, and most of what identd requests ask
for can be meaningless if you are intent on harming a system,

people running it just so they can use irc is a little stupid, as far as
privacy goes i would be inclined to run fake identd and tell them nothing real
about me, this is because i am paranoid! not because i cant be trusted.

oh the other hand, yes between trustable systems it is handy to track down the
inexperienced idiots that often break things, I run irc.essex.ac.uk for the
university of essex in colchester, on our internal network connection to the
students we have identd, when students log in from lab machines (all have
ident) then we can accurately tell which exact user is logged on and from
where.

i feel its best place is where the networked stations are trusted but the users
are not fully trusted.

but, running identd on a public ftp server, imo, a bit useless, :-) 

Ian

On Tue, Jun 17, 2003 at 01:25:54PM +0100, David Damerell wrote:
> On Tuesday, 17 Jun 2003, Tethys wrote:
> >>Requiring systems making connections to run identd is not a matter of
> >>expecting that information to be valid; it's a simple reflection of
> >>the fact that if the systems that _are_ well run all used identd the
> >>world would be a better places, and it encourages them to do so.
> >This I don't. If a site has identd running, then by all means use it.
> >But refusing to work unless without it is just brain dead. No amount
> >of blackmail like this is going to encourage anything other than faked
> >replies anyway.
> 
> This is not the case; I know of some sites that have made this change
> in order to use IRC - and if you're going to run an identd you might
> as well run one that does you some good (without exposing usernames).
> 
> I'm not saying that I think it's a good plan to try and force people
> to run identd - I don't anymore than you do - but to suggest, as the
> author of the URL mentioned before does, that there is no good reason
> to do so is false. It's just that the miniscule benefits (perhaps one
> or two sites start running it) do not generally exceed the penalties.
> 
> -- 
> David Damerell <damerell at chiark.greenend.org.uk> Distortion Field!
> 
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