____/ Kier on Sunday 30 December 2007 18:49 : \____
> On Sun, 30 Dec 2007 17:46:52 +0000, Roy Schestowitz wrote:
>
>> ____/ Kier on Sunday 30 December 2007 16:46 : \____
>>
>>> What *can* it know? Not all that mcuch.
>>>
>>>> you access a video. That's a fact. *What* information is actually sent you
>>>> cannot tell because it's a binary blob. I'll find you the references if
>>>> you want them. I can't recall where exactly I read this, but it was a very
>>>> reliable source. Vista, by the way, is no exception. XP with WGA likewise.
>>>
>>> It's only spyware if no one knows about it. As for the iPlayer, I would
>>> imagine it's attempting to be sure you're not outside the UK when you
>>> access the content. It's only supposed to be available for licence-fee
>>> payers.
>>>
>>> Binary blobs, while not ideal or desirable, are *not* automatically evil.
>>
>> No, in this case it's harvesting detailed information about use and the
>> users are not informed of it. It's like Tivo, WMP, and RealPlayer.
>
> *What* detailed informatation?
Contact the BBC and ask them for the source code of iPlayer (oh wait! Microsoft
owns the iPlayer that BBC, i.e. /us/, pay for). People have only used
monitoring tools to detect transmissions of data. In the case of WGA,
Microsoft was pressured to reveal just how much spurious data was harvested.
The company is hungry for data (Google, by the way, is not any better).
I'll leave you with this:
Quote: "Microsoft never asked me if it was OK to
send in this number, and they never said it was being sent. They are
apparently building a database that relates Ethernet adapter addresses
to personal information."
By: Robert M. Smith
Reference: President Phar Lab Software
http://news.softpedia.com/news/Forget-about-the-WGA-20-Windows-Vista-Features-and-Services-Harvest-User-Data-for-Microsoft-58752.shtml
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20070717-microsoft-patents-the-mother-of-all-adware-systems.html
http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/07/14/043200
Cancelling WGA Installation sends a report to Microsoft
,----[ Quote ]
| They decided to cancel the installation and immediately after doing
| so the firewall reported that update.exe tried to connect to the
| internet. This caught their attention of course and they decided
| to analyze the data that was send after the connection was established.
|
| They used Wireshark to analyze the traffic and found out that
| update.exe sends data to genuine.microsoft.com. Some of the data
| seems to be encrypted while some could be identified. It sends
| registry information, namely the SusClientID as well as information
| about the version of the WGA tool, the windows version and the
| language of the operating system. It also sets a cookie whichc
| ontains a GUID which could possibly be used to identify the computer.
`----
http://www.neowin.net/index.php?act=view&id=38614
--
~~ Best of wishes
Roy S. Schestowitz | Citrix: device for turning XenSource into XenSoft
http://Schestowitz.com | GNU/Linux | PGP-Key: 0x74572E8E
Mem: 515500k total, 444876k used, 70624k free, 2936k buffers
http://iuron.com - next generation of search paradigms
|
|
