To: WSFAlist at keithlynch.net
Date: Wed, 4 Feb 2004 17:16:23 -0500
Subject: [WSFA] Re: WSFA web site up again
From: ronkean at juno.com
Reply-To: WSFA members <WSFAlist at keithlynch.net>

On Wed, 4 Feb 2004 15:04:56 -0500 (EST) "Keith F. Lynch"
<kfl at KeithLynch.net> writes:

> I wonder if it was incompetence or someone's malice that caused
> them
> to think we wanted to close the account.  Does WSFA have any
> enemies?
> Can anyone phone them, claim to be us, and cancel our account, or
> do
> they make sure it's really us?
>

It seems unlikely that a prankster caused the problem; more likely it was
a mistake.  A prankster would more typically deface the site, or alter or
delete content subtly.  I would think it would be standard procedure to
verify the legitimacy of telephoned requests by asking for a passphrase
associated with the account for that purpose, but apparently the hosting
service is not doing that.

Also, the webmaster should be able to edit the website directly via its
control interface, using a passsword.  Thus it should be possible, once
the account is restored, to fix the duplicate files problem that way.
But the question remains as to why the change happened at all, and how to
keep such things from happening in the future.  Perhaps the hosting
service has no satisfactory answers for that, in which case it may not be
practical to expend much energy worrying about it, for a one time
incident.  But the hosting service did offer an explanation of sorts
(somthing about 'migrating'), which further suggests the problem was not
malicious.  If the hosting service proves to be more trouble than it's
worth, hosting could be transferred to another service.

Perhaps one lesson to be drawn from this is that the website should be
checked periodically.  Perhaps that process could be automated to happen
once or twice a day, spot checking for the validity of one or two
specific files.

Ron Kean

.

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