Bad IB questions 1

This is a real exam question along with its mark scheme answer. Who sets these questions?!

Question:
An organization is considering promoting its services on the World Wide Web (WWW) and using email to communicate with customers. Prospective customers will be required to complete a registration process and provide personal data e.g. name, email address, home address, age, sex, date of birth and up to three favourite hobbies or activities they enjoy.
Explain why each customer’s data is secure when different customers access the system at the same time. [2 marks]

Mark Scheme Answer:
the server is a multi-user environment running a multi-user operating system [1 mark], the operating system shares its time amongst the users [1 mark].

Truth:
Total nonsense. The OS will have absolutely no idea about different users of a web server. Normally the web server process will run under a single OS user account that has sufficient privileges to do what it’s supposed to but no more. For example, it is unlikely to have access to the file system. The web server software will have its own database of users whose access it will manage using a multi-threaded “connection pool”. It is absolute rubbish that each web client will have its own OS account.

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