Re: LYNX-DEV SSL for Lynx 2.8

[Mark Mentovai]

On Sun, 8 Mar 1998, Wayne Buttles wrote:

> Time to show my stupid side again ... what can Lynx + SSL do and what
> can't it do?  

It can do everything.  Kind of.

SSL is a way of transferring data securely over the Internet.  The
advantage of having SSL support is the ability to access the sites out
there that require it.  Usually, these sites inlcude online shopping
doohickeys and things like that which require people to enter sensitive
data like credit card numbers.  Without SSL, any Joe Hacker could sniff
out your credit card numbers.  (Well, not -ANY- Joe Hacker...  I don't
want to be getting mail from a guy named Joe Hacker saying that he's
offended.)  With SSL, they can't.  It's as simple as that.

Some (stupid) sites that use SSL also don't work with Lynx.  Those sites
are stupid, though.  Let's forget about them.  I've successfully used Lynx
in the past to purchase airline tickets using SSL - there's something that
I wouldn't have been able to do without SSL support.  (Not without
launching Netscape, anyway...)

Adding SSL support to the Lynx executable doesn't break anything.  It's a
win/win situation - nobody gets shafted!.  (Except you need to build
SSLeay, which can turn in to a big pain for novices and even experts.)

-Mox

--
Mark Mentovai
address@hidden
http://www.moxienet.com/