🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <4046q6$2i0o@news.gate.net>, Adam L <adaml@gate.net> wrote:
>[ . . . ] Can you prove that America
>Online, Prodigy, Compuserve aren't sucking your hard drive away bit by
>bit with every keystroke you send over the modem?  How about netscape?
>[ . . . ] Maybe all
>the winsock companies are in on it, too, slowly leeching your private
>information, then selling it on the black market... 

No, one cannot be sure that any of the major online services, especially
those that use proprietary clients, like AOL and Prodigy, are not taking
advantage of their access to your files.  You will never know for sure.  The
same could be true of Netscape, though since it uses open protocols such
action would be much more easily detected.

>Give me a break.  It's not as if this was a 'hidden' feature of MSN...

Give ME a break.  The fact that the MSN installation procedure transmitted
details of the user's files back to Microsoft was not commonly known before
someone outside Microsoft discovered it.  You can be sure Microsoft was not in
any hurry for users to fully understand the meaning to the question.  The
exact content of these transmissions has yet to be actually documented any-
where that I know of and reports vary from poster to poster.  Since Windows/95
was in beta when this issue was revealed, Microsoft could easily have changed
the probe in post-discovery releases.  Only Microsoft knows for sure.

Max
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