user authentication on database then on remote server

[mapexdrum]

I am just curious if there is anyway to send a login to a remote apache server without sending the username and password through the URL after a user has authenticated via a login form?

I have thought about using

<?
header("Location: [url]http://user:[/url][p][e-mail]/folder[");

but this is not what i want to do because obviously the username and password is revealed in the address bar of the browser...thus defeating the purpose of having the user pay for a login name...right??

I have also looked into using

<?
fsockopen();
?>

but cannot seem to tailor this to my needs, perhaps this is not what i should be using.

Aaron

Any assistance on this matter is greatly appreciated.