Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 2000/12/19
[Author Prev] [Author Next] [Thread Prev] [Thread Next] [Author Index] [Topic Index] [Home] [Search]> since it seems like Brian wants to talk > about this: Well, not really. I just didn't want to see people unnecessarily afraid of putting credit card numbers in email. The probability-theory analysis works if all email traffic is credit card numbers. If you assume that every 16-digit number is a credit card number and that its expiration date and billing address are in the same packet, the probability that you can, by monitoring a packet path, grab a credit card number and the information needed to authenticate it is very low. If such wiretapping were legal I'd try it right now to see what sort of a hit rate I get. But the Communications Privacy Act of 1986 makes such tapping illegal in the USA (18 USC 2510), so I won't.