Subscriptions. You might want to make some of your Web site's content (like stock market analysis, "inside" information about a sports team, photographs, etc.) available only to people who pay for subscriptions to your site.
Privacy. You might have pages on your site that contain information that should not be made available to the general public. An organization, for example, might want to make members' names, addresses, phone numbers, and email addresses available to its membership, but might not want its members to be harrassed by junk mail, unsolicited phone calls, or spam email. A school might want to have pages that show student names and pictures but are available only to authorized members of the school community.
Confidential Information. You might want your site to contain information that is valuable to some people but is not intended for the general public. A contractor, for example, might offer customers the ability to view pictures and construction status of their homes. A merchant might offer special discounts and promotions for preferred customers.
Spam Prevention. One of the way that spammers get email addresses is by using automated programs (robots) to visit Web sites and follow links from page to page. If they find anything with an "@" symbol in it, they "harvest" the email address and use it to send unsolicited email messages. If you put an email address on an unprotected Web page, you can be sure that it will begin receiving large numbers of spam messages within a short time. Using password security to protect pages with email addresses will thwart spammers from harvesting them.
Special Audiences. You might dedicate certain parts of your Web site to specific audiences or groups. A large company, for example, might have a "bulletin board" where employees can post items about carpooling, social events, etc. Because this area might reveal identifying information about workers or contain other personal data, it is appropriate to make it available only to authorized employees.
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