- 1.1 Opinions, Products
- 1.2 Roadmap to the Book
- 1.3 Terminology
- 1.4 Notation
- 1.5 Cryptographically Protected Sessions
- 1.6 Active and Passive Attacks
- 1.7 Legal Issues
- 1.8 Some Network Basics
- 1.9 Names for Humans
- 1.10 Authentication and Authorization
- 1.11 Malware: Viruses, Worms, Trojan Horses
- 1.12 Security Gateway
- 1.13 Denial-of-Service (DoS) Attacks
- 1.14 NAT (Network Address Translation)
This chapter is from the book
This chapter is from the book
This chapter is from the book
1.9 Names for Humans
It is sometimes important that an identifier for a human be unique, but it is not important for a human to have a single unique name. Humans have many unique identifiers. For example, an email address, a telephone number, or a username specific to a website. In theory, nobody but the human needs to know that the various identities refer to the same human, but, unfortunately, it has become easy for organizations to correlate various identities. Also, it is not uncommon for family members or close friends to share an account, so an email address or username at a website might actually be multiple humans, but we will ignore that issue.
Human names are problematic. Consider email addresses. Typically, companies let the first John Smith use the name John@companyname for his email address, and then perhaps the next one will be Smith@companyname, and the next one JSmith@companyname, and the next one has to start using middle initials. Then, to send to your colleague John Smith, you have to do the best you can to figure out which email address in the company directory is the one you want, based on various attributes (such as their location or their job title, if you are lucky enough to have this information included in the directory). There will be lots of confusion when one John Smith gets messages intended for a different John Smith. This is a problem for both the John Smith that is mistakenly sent the email, as well as the John Smith who was the intended recipient of the email. Usually, a person can quickly delete spam, but with a name like John Smith, irrelevant-looking email might actually be important email for a different John Smith in the company, so must be carefully read, and forwarded just in case. And the unfortunate John Smith who received the email has the problem of figuring out which John Smith he should forward the email to.
One way of solving this problem is that once a company hired someone with a particular name, they just wouldn’t hire another. I2 (with the name Radia Perlman, which is probably unique in the entire world) think that’s reasonable, but someone with a name like John Smith might start having problems finding a company that could hire him.
Now why did you name your baby John? Every Tom, Dick, and Harry is named John.
—Sam Goldwyn