RevNet certification(?)

Richard Gaskin ambassador at fourthworld.com
Thu May 22 16:29:01 EDT 2003


To clarify the risks inherent in downloading any executable over the 'Net,
I'll be adding a new screen to RevNet soon which will appear only once
requiring confirmation of its terms before proceeding (just standard
liability waiver stuff -- I'm in California <g>).

It occurs to me that there may be benefit from having a way to distinguish
between "trusted" and "unknown" contributors to RevNet's index of
user-contributed downloadable stacks.

I could easily create a scheme in which certain domains (like Ken's,
Chipp's, Jacque's) are on a "trusted domain" list, and their contributions
to the index could have a small star next to them (or smiley face or
whatever -- you get the idea) to indicate the resource is hosted on a site
known by RevNet's admin (today that would be me) to be under the control of
a person who is not likely malicious by nature (except for Jacque, who makes
evil time-sucking games).

Certifying people I know is a no-brainer.  The hard question is:

  How do I verify the intentions of new certificate applicants
  who are not known to me?

To be fair, any criteria for "trusted" certification should be objective; I
don't want to be in a position of making value judgements about people, nor
risk approving a virus writer by giving undue benefit of the doubt.

In the absence of any objective criteria, I may call the certificate program
"Friends of Fourth World", and limit it to people I know personally
(literally friends).  Since I know most of the folks likely to add lots of
entries into RevNet's index, today it's not much of an issue.  But down the
road, as Rev's audience grows, I'd like to find some means of verifying
"trustworthiness" but without risking offending anyone.

Any suggestions?

Ironically, certificates issued by Verisign, a logo that carries all sorts
of feel-good "trustworthiness", are really nothing more than a verification
that data transmitted is reasonably secure and that they have verified the
email address of the domain owner.  For all the feel-good associated with
that logo, beyond verifying the admin's email it says nothing about the
trustworthiness of anything available at the site.  Expectations management
is a funny buiness....

-- 
 Richard Gaskin 
 Fourth World Media Corporation
 Developer of WebMerge 2.2: Publish any database on any site
 ___________________________________________________________
 Ambassador at FourthWorld.com       http://www.FourthWorld.com
 Tel: 323-225-3717                       AIM: FourthWorldInc




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