[CQ-Contest] LoTW - Additional Thoughts....

[Pete Smith]

At 04:09 AM 9/30/03 +0000, Dennis Ponsness wrote:
>I do think that the ARRL may have to "rethink" their policy for DX 
>stations to participate however.  I have about 40 Q's out of 3300+ 
>"confirmed" and all but 2 of them are US stations (the 2 DX are from the 
>same HA station).
>  Surely the vast majority of countries HAVE a database listing similar to 
> the FCC data base, so why couldn't the same policy be used for them as 
> well?  Send the postcard to the address on the official database just 
> like they do for US stations.  I would like to see how many DX stations 
> have uploaded to LoTW so far - I would bet that there is less than a hundred.

My information on this may not be current, but I believe that some major 
countries, as a matter of privacy policy, do NOT make their licensee 
databases freely available on-line.  The last time I checked, Germany was 
an example of this.

Having said this, it seems to me that ARRL could, and in future *may* begin 
a policy of distinguishing between countries which make licensee address 
data freely available on the internet and those that do not.  On the other 
hand, I'm not sure how much time or hassle this will save.  There is still 
one postal mail delay (ID document going in or certificate password going 
out) and one e-mail communication required for either US or non-US users, 
and no way I can see of getting around that without seriously compromising 
security.

The internet is full of bad guys -- I just got an e-mail this morning from 
a European country purporting to be from eBay and wanting my credit card 
data to "revalidate" my account.  Yeah, sure.  But my point is, we can't be 
sure there are no "bad guy hams," and I'd surmise that the level of badness 
required to spoof a LotW submission is a lot less than that required to 
attempt credit card fraud, so its more likely there are a small number out 
there who would take advantage of a security hole if one were available.


73, Pete N4ZR

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