Privacy and passwords

Keith A. Milner kamilner at superlative.org
Wed Mar 5 05:36:32 EST 2008


On Tuesday 04 March 2008 23:01:19 Davey Jones wrote:
> > >J. Alex Aycinena alex.aycinena at gmail.com wrote
> > >Even in
> > >a household situation you should have seperate accounts and passwords
> > > for each family member
> > >
> > >On Sunday 02 March 2008 21:00:43 Robert Heller wrote:
> > >
> > > This is fact a 'wrong thing to do' and only happens because people
> > > became 'used' to the non-existent security of MacOS Classic and Win
> > > 3.11/Win 9X.  With Win2K, WinXP, WinVista, Linux, and MacOSX, there
> > > really is NO reason to have separate login accounts
> >>
> >>At Mon, 3 Mar 2008 23:33:59 +0000 "Keith A. Milner" <kamilner at
>
> superlative.org> wrote:
> > >If someone cannot even do something as simple as set up different login
> > >accounts for their sensitive data then they haven't got a clue about
> > > security and "the real world".
> > >
> > >Andrew Sackville-West andrew at swclan.homelinux.org Sun Mar 2 15:20:41
> > > EST 2008 As a fringe developer on this project, I don't give a rat's
> > > ass whether gnucash becomes mainstream or not.
>
> My point was that pointing out what people "should" be doing or what
> is "the wrong way" to use your computer isn't very helpful when in the
> real world most people don't have separate accounts for each user.
> That's a simple fact, the fact that you don't agree with it doesn't
> change that. The majority of home users trade a certain amount of
> security for convenience, and not having to log off and log on again
> within in the confines of your own home is one of those conveniences.

Most of the people I know (and most are not technical users) do have separate 
login accounts for each user. This is partly because they want to keep things 
like personal email and IM away from their kids.

Admittedly some of them have started out with the single account, but most 
have switched over quite quickly when they've realised that they have 
important or personal info that they don't want their kids snooping around.

>
> Again, I know a simple password would not provide a high degree of
> security, but it *would* be enough to deter most casual passers by,
> including family members.

As Andrew points out elsewhere, it might be a good "marketing" feature, 
although it probably has negative value in terms of increasing security.

Note that Gnucash isn't "competing" against Quicken and the like and, 
therefore, doesn't need to put pseudo-features in just to attract users. If 
people want to use Gnucash because of the excellent features it provides, 
that's great. If they would rather use a different package because of 
different features, support, or (in this case) because the marketing is more 
glossy, that's not going to have a major impact on the Gnucash project. there 
are no shareholders to please.

> I keep my personal diary in a drawer in my 
> house with a simple lock. It could easily be picked with just a
> hairpin, but I know that that this minimal amount of security make a
> huge difference compared to me leaving it out on the desk where
> curiosity may well prove too tempting for anyone who walks by.

One assumes you have (or could have) other private items in that drawer.

Having a separate user account is that locked drawer. Separate user accounts 
(as pointed out elsewhere in this forum) is not a security panacea, but it 
provides a far greater level of security than a simple application-level 
password and has many other benefits besides.

>
>  If you were concerned about it providing people with a false sense of
> security, you could put a warning on the option stating that it was a
> simply a minor deterrent and would not stop someone who was determined
> to access your data. This approach is used in several other apps.

Yeah, and very few people read or understand those.

>
> In any case, it is clear that the developers have their own priorities
> (fair enough, it's your project after all), and are aiming Gnucash at
> users who are have the same amount of technical knowledge as they do.

I'll point out that this is an Open Source project. The reason this facility 
is not there is because noone has developed it. Basically all of the 
developers who have contributed to this project either think it's not 
required, or is very low priority. Given the effort required to develop this 
I would agree: I would far rather more fundamental capabilities were 
developed (and bugs fixed) than having one of the current, talented, 
developers waste time on a feature that few want.

But, as I said, it's Open Source. There's nothing to stop you implementing 
such a feature if you feel it's. Go ahead and submit a patch.

> So I guess I'll haul my "lazy" and "clueless" ass back to Quicken and
> leave you guys to play with your toys the way you want to.

It seems you don't understand what Gnucash is.

This is a community, not customer-supplier relationship. You have part-share 
in Gnucash (if you want it) and can influence it's direction (if you want 
to). One way to influence this direction is to make feature suggestions, but 
the current dev team have limited time, and their own priorities. You can 
argue that their priorities are wrong (as you have) but expect disagreement. 
That's all part of being in a community.

Remember, the developers on Gnucash are largely doing it because they have 
certain requirements they want or need themselves. They will have their own 
priority list. you cannot expect one person's view to override that priority 
list. In fact even if a hundred people have the same view, that developer may 
still not change his/her priority list. Remember, the dev has no boss to 
report to, no shareholders to please. They do it to please themselves. In a 
lot of cases this also means pleasing those in the community with similar 
requirements.

You make a lot of claims about why you think this particular feature is so 
important. From the responses you've had, your view is in the minority in 
this community. Of course you can make claims about "what normal people" do, 
but the reaility is many of us are "normal people" and what you describe is 
not what we do.

I repeat again, this is an Open Source community. Most of the rest of this 
community do not appear to want this feature. If this was commercial 
software, you would be stck. It's not, and you have some choices:

1. Live with it
2. Develop the feature yourself and contribute it
3. Flounce off in a huff

If you don't want to be part of this community, that's fair enough. I'm sure 
the shareholders won't lose any sleep.

Cheers,

-- 
Keith A. Milner


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