are form results secure?

[Catherine Jo Morgan]

I removed the guestbook from my site because I got tired of cleaning out
entries from link robots or link spammers. Now they're making entries in a
subscription form, but at least I get an email so I know that it's happened.
The form results (with the long lists of links) are stored in two places,
both in the _private folder: formrslt.htm and formrslt.csv.

Search engine robots won't find these links in the private folder, will
they? I can clean out entries easily enough in the formrst.htm folder, but
if I open the .csv file it opens in excel and I get warning messages about
saving the changed file. Should I bother to clean these out? My robots.txt
file doesn't say anything about the _private folder because I thought it was
never searched anyway.

I'll appreciate any advice and information.

Cathy Morgan, http://www.cjmorgan.com/

 

[Thomas A. Rowe]

If they can follow a path, they can find the data. FP forms always shows the path, so best not to
store in a file on the server, unless it is a database.

A robot.txt is has one drawback, it is a roadmap to content that you don't want indexed, so hackers
that are looking for content, can open it and see what you are trying to hide.

--
==============================================
Thomas A. Rowe (Microsoft MVP - FrontPage)
WEBMASTER Resources(tm)

FrontPage Resources, WebCircle, MS KB Quick Links, etc.
==============================================

 

[Andrew Murray]

a csv file is just a text file.

if the form is on the web to be filled out, no doubt spammers will find it.

how do you mean and in what context do you mean "secure"....?

in internet terms, "secure" generally means encrypted so noone else can read
it, or access it - in this case you've asked about the _private folder -
which I think *should not* be accessible by general browsing, only scripts
should be able to access it.

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