[EAS]XP Phone Home

[pjk]

Subject:   XP Phone Home

An article about how Windows XP Search Assistant silently exchanges
files with a site at Microsoft. <http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/4/24815.html>

> Certainly, the minute one ventures onto the Web, one starts bleeding
> information all over the place, fetching images and ads and taking
> cookies from secondary and tertiary sources too numerous to mention.
> 
> But when we run an application for some local business like a file
> search, we don't expect it to connect silently to the Net, even for
> a good reason. When we discover something like this, it feels like
> someone else is in control of our computer, and that is definitely
> not a good feeling. 
> 
> If Trustworthy Computing is going to mean anything, it's going to
> have to mean that actions like file downloads aren't going to happen
> without the user's knowledge and consent.

   --PJK