From: Pete Loshin <pete@loshin.com>
Date: Sat, 10 Feb 1996 18:19:16 +0800
To: "'cypherpunks@toad.com>
Subject: RE: Web900 -  The easiest way to charge users ...
Message-ID: <01BAF752.C34B9780@ploshin.tiac.net>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain


Bob Hettinga forwarded to the list this:

>--- begin forwarded text
[deletia]
> ------------------------------------------------------------------
> Web900 -  The easiest way to charge users to access your web site!
> ------------------------------------------------------------------
[more deletia]

Rather than rely on the text Bob forwarded, I took a look at the Web page and
it appears to not have much more information than provided here.

Without knowing any more about this system than what is on their Web page,
one (apparently) obvious flaw is that it makes it real easy for me to charge my 
Web fees to my mother-in-law/friend/whoever's house I can get into and make 
the 900 # call.

Presumably this flaw can be minized by giving the access code a short
time to live so you have to enter it in the system real soon after getting it,
to discourage running around to all your (soon to be ex-)friends' houses.

Of course, this brings up the even more obvious flaw:

You have to cut short your browsing session (if you dial in) to make the phone
call, and then dial back in.  This strikes me as being much more complicated
and burdensome than any other method cited.  Also, since it seems that you
set up an account with the merchant through a single call/code, you could run
up quite a tab on someone else--untraceably--before you would get cut off.

It would be interesting to hear more about how this system
handles these issues.

-Pete Loshin
 pete@loshin.com