Re: A modest proposal for access authentication

Erik Ostrom (eostrom@gac.edu)
Fri, 17 Sep 1993 08:46:36 (CDT)

> > a) add a new kind of URL: FTPU://host/path
> > this URL is like FTP: except that it assumes that the user will
> > supply a user name and password, i.e., not anonymous access
>
> how about <ftp://martin@genie.lut.ac.uk/whatever> ?

Except that if you give me this URL, I get logged in as martin
(assuming I know your password). The FTPU scheme says "log in as
yourself". So you could have data readable by both martin and
eostrom, and point to it with the URL
<FTPU://genie.lut.ac.uk/whatever>
and both you and I could get at it without my having to know your
password or vice versa.