[ale] identd : privacy concerns

[Geoff Harrison]

On Sat, Jan 09, 1999 at 04:44:05PM -0500, Joe Bayes wrote:
> 
> Seeing some unknown hostnames in my system logs inspired me to read up
> on identd. As I understand it, identd allows anyone who knows the
> local and remote ports of a TCP connection to find out the username of
> the process which is running that connection. 
> 
> I don't see a real use for this service, other than web sites
> collecting email addresses to spam. RFC 1413 states that, "The use of
> the information returned by this protocol for other than auditing is
> strongly discouraged." Somehow I don't think the spammers feel too
> discouraged about this.
> 
> Can anyone give me a legit and necessary use of identd, or some other
> reason why I shouldn't disable it? 
> 
> thanks,
> 
> --joe

1) irc
2) ftp
3) pop3
4) imap

need I go on?
-- 
Geoff Harrison (http://mandrake.net)
President - Enlightened Solutions, Inc.
Author, MAW Shell Replacement (http://mandrake.net/MAW)
Author, Enlightenment Window Manager (http://www.enlightenment.org)
phone: (404)760-8164