Privacy Questions about XP

[renegade1346]

I am currently running Windows ME, which blows but that is beside the point, on this machine but have a copy of Windows XP Pro that I bought and plan to install it soon. But before I do I was wondering, does XP tell Microsoft that you have downloaded mp3s on your hard drive? And does it tell Microsoft everything else that is on your hard drive? I know that it tells them certain pieces of hardware that you have when you have to activate it, but was just wondering if it told the contents of the hard drive(s), that seems like a bit of privacy invasion if it does. Thanks in advance for everyones replies.

[Disk_Contented]

If your at all worried, use "xp antispy" or similar utilities.
Also use "Adaware" these will remove known spyware products (such as the Alexa key installed by windows update).

[jombo]

i too wondered about this and all the leaks i had heard about xp.
i ran a network sniffer on another box and snooped on the xp
junk awhile after install. killed several useless auto update things
and watched killed extra services and such.

and as it is its quieter and more secure than the 95 and 98 boxes
on the lan. just run a firewall (tiny or zonealarm) i much prefer
tiny myself lots less wasted resources compared to za. so quiet
the network icon in taskbar hides itself lol.

and as for windows update who knows what they snoop into.
i sure dont. but i tend to think its a registry scan myself.

im behind a router with nat and i still think a firewall is a must.
then i addaware and a few other things to clean up the crap.
set cookie protection as never accept cookies and allow only the
ones you really need and xp pro is or appears very private to
me after 10 years screwing with windows.

have fun thats the main thing and not to worry

[Protocol Droid]

I have heard alot about XP doing this. When you sign their End User Licence Agreement, you are agreeing to give Microsoft the right to delete all MP3s from your hard drive. The keepo a record of your internet history in secret hidden files, nobody outside MS really knows what they do with these files. I'm sure if MS all of the sudden decided to delete people's MP3s, there would be an uproar, but at the same time, I don't exactly like anyone having the capability of doing that to my computer. If your going to go the XP route and continue on to its successors, you're going to have to give in to this. I on the other hand have stopped using Windows.

[jombo]

yea i forgot to mention the dreaded index.dat in your cookies folder. that thing is full of bout all your browsing history good to
del it after you get your cookies set and all. just reboot on a dos floppy and del it. then xp will recreate it new when it boots. all the sad porn and warez sites gone from there.

i use a batch file in autoexec for this.
del c:\docume~1\user-name\cookies\index.dat
does a nice job. it doesnt lose your cookies you want just clears the index.dat

as for mp3s. i have a 60 gig drive full on here ive installed xp several times several updates from microsoft all the normal goodies. never lost a mp3 file or file name ever.
mp3 renaming sounds like a trojan, worm, or hack. man if gates did that he wouldnt sell many operating systems.

and that index.dat will fix lots of the crashes that come into ie after a few weeks of heavy browsing. like missing icons on some pages folks see. least it does here.

have fun and remember the good old days instead of registrys we had .ini files lol..

[Protocol Droid]

You can run that script to delete the index.dat all you want. The problem is that it won't delete the file that XP copies your index.dat from. I don't know if anybody has figured out how to do that in XP yet. Apparently MS caught on to the fact that people were getting rid of index.dat, and took care of it. Well, palladium is made for just that, making sure people don't play mp3s or other files that arn't MS approved. Get out while you still can. Better back up all those MP3s and if you want to backup your history, you can just copy index.dat and your favorites file and put them on a floppy or CD. I don't think microsoft will all of the sudden delete everyones files, but you have to ask yourself why that have given themselves the capability to do this with windows XP. They will probably do what they can gradually. When Palladium hits, they could even take your files and make it so you can only play them X number of times etc.