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Running cost/benefit on this is great, except that the numbers still don't add up.

Instead of a user id that is obviously some row in a database, use a UUID and do your db lookups against that. Worst case you have to put in some kind of local UUID -> user id lookup table because you can't manage to change the user record database directly. Now, barring a broken UUID generation scheme, it's virtually impossible to crawl for user accounts. Plus you have a scheme for providing the same guarantee on any other identifiers.

Obviously that doesn't prevent the larger problem of "guessing your user id and munging a url lets me into your account without a login", but it at least makes the guessing part worlds harder for relatively little work.



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