[WikiEN-l] How to get around AOL proxies?

[Ilmari Karonen]

Tim Starling wrote:
> 
> There's a simple, non-invasive way to determine the IP address of an AOL client, which I've been
> looking into recently: use SSL sign-on. Make the login links go to https://secure.wikimedia.org, and
> redirect them back when they're logged in. SSL requests skip the proxy cluster. We would store the
> IP address at login in the session, and then continue to use that IP address for the user after they
> return to the unsecured part of the site. And of course there are security benefits for all users.

If that really works, couldn't we just make AOL users _edit_ over SSL? 
Have http links with action=edit (or action=submit) redirect to an https 
URL if fetched from an AOL proxy.

This would break talk message notification for unregistered AOL users, 
but I suppose we could use a cookie for that.  After all, talk pages are 
public, so there's no security issue even if someone fakes the cookie.

-- 
Ilmari Karonen