Hugo wrote:
> I still can't believe how stupid that QuipTex developer must be:

Yeah.

Although, as several people have commented, the mail reaction to the 
post seems to be "ZOMG! FREE PR0N!" rather than "wow, this is a major 
security problem"...

> Now the cherry on top of the cake - Google started indexing the pictures:

Google indexes just about everything on the Internet. Hell, *my* website 
is probably indexed by Google, and nobody even visits it!



I used to have a pager. You know, those old gizmos that you could send 
an 8-character message to and it would flash up on the chunky LCD 
display. To use it, you had to telephone a human operator and tell them 
what message you wanted to send (which usually involves negotiating how 
to fit it into 8 characters). And then the operator would type it into 
their computer and send it.

(Why can't you send it from your computer over the Internet? Well, 
actually you can. So I downloaded and installed the custom application 
required to do this, and... it assumes you have a dialup modem. It's 
trying to actually dial the provider's number and send the data 
directly. Rather than, you know, SENDING IT OVER THE INTERNET!)

[So I contacted the company about this, and got back a standard reply 
saying "oh, hey, why don't you download this tool? It lets you send 
pages over the Internet". Obviously if a human had bothered to read it, 
they would have seen that this was the exact tool I was complaining 
about not working!]

Veering vaguely back on track, the ToS for the pager said that their 
operators would refuse to send any messages that were rude or obscene.

Today I can just send text messages from my phone. I don't need to call 
an operator. But back when you did, it was "obvious" that the operator 
knows what message you're sending - they type it for you! I wonder, in 
this day and age of SMS, does anybody sit there and read this stuff? How 
hard would that actually be? Certainly I've heard that some people send 
pretty sensitive stuff by SMS. Is that actually safe?

And yes, if you want to use your phone to send pictures of your genetals 
to your friends via an insecure carrier, you probably deserve what you 
get. ;-)

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