Well, I suspect that the authorities might not interpret your probing a
bank site as innocent, and how could you prove any different? Similarly if
you walked into a brick and mortar bank without permission to check the
security of their safe.
Similarly, if you set off an alarm while checking the door of a business
that sells your merchandise, you might easily spend the night in jail.
The legal system does not actually seem to favor this sort of proactive
"checking". Your options are generally retroactive. That is, if the
merchant who has taken your goods on consignment is robbed, and turns out
not to have insurance, then you sue them for negligence. Or if you want to
be proactive about it, you define the terms in your contract. But you
still end up having to sue if the contract is breached.
In the real world, just because you can climb through the barb-wire
fence that a "No Trespassing" sign is posted on, doesn't mean that you are
not trespassing when you do so.
In the real world, tampering with someone's physical mailbox is against
Federal Law. So if I stuck a coat-hanger in your mail slot to see if it
had some underdesirable property or other, it would clearly be a violation
of law.
Where exactly are MY personal boundaries? Where I say they are, or where
you say they are? Perhaps we should test peoples suceptibility to muggers
by jumping out at them from bushes while they are walking alone at night?
I mean, once you allow one thing, then where exactly do you draw the line?
On Wed, 2 Feb 2000, Norman Richards wrote:
>
>
> > OK then, let's take it into the physical world. Should I be able to
> > test the doors of your house or car to see if your alarms are
> > working?
>
> If you had something at stake - sure. For example, if you left an
> object in my car then you certainly would be justified in doing so.
> Or, suppose I own a business which sells your merchandise. Would it
> be wrong for you to check on the door if you were walking by at night?
> Or even if you were considering doing business with me, it would seem
> appropriate to take a careful measure of my security methods.
>
> Let's bring this back online. Recently there was some talk about
> online banks on this list. Security is a big concern. Would I be
> wrong to probe their website a bit to see if I can find any holes in
> their system before I put money in?
>
> Obviously online banking is an entirely different thing than sending
> mail, but I don't see any fundamental problem with doing some probing
> of a remote host you will be contacting in the future - at least in
> the case that the probing is relevant to the the contact you will
> have.
>
> But, my disclaimer again is that I'm not stating the above as
> anything I've spent more than the last half hour thinking about.
>
> ___________________________________________________________________________
> [EMAIL PROTECTED] soli deo gloria
>
>
>
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