I was talking with someone the other day, and he asked me if I was trustworthy. (It was to get a shell on his linux box, and basically, if I wasn’t, he didn’t want me to have it.) The way he wanted me to prove was to find someone who he did trust to vouch for me. It was easy enough, but it got me wondering how you trust someone. Especially when the internet is concerned. I talked to l8nite for some ideas, and he said basically what I’ve always lived by. You don’t have to, but you can choose to. Trust is a fickle thing. For me anyways. It’s there until you abuse it. Like Nick. He was my best friend, and I love him as a brother. Suddenly he told me he never wanted to see me again. He called me a liar, and all this other stuff… after telling me that I was his friend. And Aubree… I’m sure I don’t have to explain why I could never trust her again.
And I knew all this. But where is the line? I guess you have to weigh your risk. I asked l8nite, “What makes you think I didn’t sit here and bs for a while just to get ops on the channel? What makes you think I’m not going to try and take it over?” His responce was jokingly, “Well, I don’t think that, but now that you mention it…” *heh* Basically, he thinks the idea that I might be a good operator for him outweights the chance that I might try and do something abusive. All I can do is take over the channel, a minor problem, and more of an annoyance than anything. However, I could help protect the rules, and that I guess is why I got what I did. However, the shell account is another thing. I could break into something or even hack his own box. Either way would cause more than a minor annoyance, and possibly get Cyon, the owner of the computer in lots of trouble.
The point of this is… back when I was a system admin, I let all my friends use my work network and stuff for file transfers. Shells were there if they wanted it. I was allowed to do this. And it was so we could play around. Have GCC or something else. I never even thought they might abuse it. None of them did, thank god, but what if. Do I trust too blindly? I think I shall always live trusting until proven otherwise, and just deal with getting burned once in a while…

Why? I think the experience and friendship you gain by trusting outweights the pain. And besides, people who don’t trust anyone are always miserable. Ya know?

Oh well, feel free to post your thoughts
Matt

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Filed under: Uncategorized - @ April 10, 2003 12:49 pm