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2.4.7 Requesting Password-protected Web/FTP sites

User authentication support for password-protected sites is also available by www4mail. To access such Web site/pages conforming to the pattern
`protocol://username:password@site/directory'
you need to know (and then pass on) the correct USERNAME and PASSWORD. Note the @-sign! In these cases send an e-mail
 
           To: www4mail@wm.ictp.trieste.it
      Subject:         (... whatever you like)
 
and write in the body of the e-mail:
 
      http://username:password@site/path
or
      ftp://username:password@site/path
where site/path is the machine,domain,directory,file you want to retrieve and the @-sign is used to separate the string `username:password' from the site/path.

If the username or password contains an @-sign, please prefix it with a back slash, example: "username:pass\@word@site/path".

Once you have received the www4mail reply, you will be able to navigate to such protected pages without further authentication. www4mail will do it automatically for you. Of course, you can get the same information in the body of a e-mail message and as a plain text file, by adding the GET or SEND options, or as an HTML source adding GET SOURCE, SOURCE or XSOURCE options. BUT PLEASE NOTE passwords passed this way, like everything else under e-mail, are not necessarily private, because: