🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <406p5l$gt9@thetics.europa.com>, mbell@atheria.europa.com (Max
Bell) wrote:

> 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.

This seems correct.

> >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.

Correct again.

I think the difference between Netscape possibly getting information off
my system and MS getting information off my system is that I have never
questioned that AOL, Prodigy, Netscape, Apple, IBM, NCSA, etc. had any
interest in my system other than the one which they advertised. There
aren't too many people out there that haven't been bitten by MS at one
time or another. How many people get regular faxes from MS after they've
disclosed their fax number in a registration process? How many people get
faxes from Apple, IBM, etc. after providing the same information? 

The point is that MS is clearly aggressive with the information it
collects - I can't think of another company that I trust to transmit data
that has anywhere close to the level of aggression that MS puts forth. If
IBM puts me on a mailing list, I trust them to remove me when I ask. MS
doesn't offer me that service. If Apple asks me to register something, I
can disclose that I don't want my info sold to other companies, and they
seem to adhere to that quite nicely, MS does not offer me that.

It's a simple matter of trust, whether you call me paranoid or not, the
fact of the matter is that I, and a lot of other people, don't trust MS.
We are allowed to not trust MS and to complain when they invade our space
without our full concent. The fact that MS didn't disclose that info was
being sent certainly justifies that lack of trust.

-- 
Bob Cassidy
UC Irvine