>I doubt that anyone who's willing to email us to ask >would be that malicious, besides, how big a target is the astronomy crowd? A somewhat larger concern than simply attacking the astronomy crowd is the denial-of-service (DOS) issue. To clarify, someone could include DOS software in a some useful astronomy-related software. At some future date, that software could be activated to launch an attack against another computer to overload it, for instance a government site, a traffic control computer, a power grid management system, etc. The purpose being disruption or simply to deny legitmate users the service being provided (hence "denial of service.") Other than denial of service, I have not heard of this kind of attack...yet. But, frankly, I think it's just a matter of time. The software necessary to do this is available, piecemeal, on the Internet now. The issue isn't "how big a target is the astronomy crowd," but how big a flood of traffic could the astronomy crowd generate. It could be considerable with the number of us having broadband Internet connections and computers capable of generating the cool astro-images I've seen. For the most part, it is a small risk, particularly since we're talking about putting links on for people who ask, rather than some automated posting system. But since we're discussing it, I thought I should raise the issue, especially for the folks who are unaware of these possibilities. Yes, this is somewhat paranoid, but as a defense contractor, I've been well trained in paranoia. Joe