?? Call me old fashioned, but this is called 'defensive coding' and should (in my opinion) be the norm when dealing with client-generated input. It might be more verbose and not 'The Rails Way', but update_attributes seems like too much magic for my paranoid taste.
Yes, that makes sense. If your view's form should only update the user's name, then the logic that handles that form submission should only update the user's name. Allowing the client to inject other attributes (even allowed/whitelisted ones) could potentially break other app logic.
