Re: Is there a way to identify the a user in a web request?

On 24 May 2013 12:14, Leon Derczynski <leon@dcs.shef.ac.uk> wrote:

> It's been traditional for crawlers to specify an email or web URI in the
> "From:" header of any HTTP requests they make; this could readily be used
> for an identifying link.
>

It could be done, but I think there would be pushback from the IETF on
this, as "From" has some legacy relation to email.

http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc2616#section-14.22

Mark Nottingham has suggested that the ABNF forbids the use of HTTP
identifiers, but I am unsure that this is 100% accurate, as the RFC says
"SHOULD"

So I think there needs to be clarification on this, before reusing it.
Alternatively if there's another header that can be used, consensus could
be established.


>
> All the best,
>
>
> Leon
>
>
> On 24 May 2013 11:53, Melvin Carvalho <melvincarvalho@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> In most communication protocols it's possible to specify a sender
>>
>> For example, when I send a letter I can write my address on the back
>>
>> When I make a phone call, it's possible to have "caller display" to see
>> who's calling
>>
>> When sending an email I can see who the email is from
>>
>> But on the web, it's not obvious how to do this
>>
>> Does anyone have a solution to this, or why it may be a bad idea?
>>
>
>
>
> --
> Leon R A Derczynski
> Research Associate, NLP Group
>
> Department of Computer Science
> University of Sheffield
> Regent Court, 211 Portobello
> Sheffield S1 4DP, UK
>
> +45 5157 4948
> http://www.dcs.shef.ac.uk/~leon/
>