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From: mcdonald@aries.scs.uiuc.edu (Doug McDonald)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.ibm.pc.misc
Subject: Re: Is Prodigy safe to use?
Message-ID: <1990Dec17.171847.14470@ux1.cso.uiuc.edu>
Date: 17 Dec 90 17:18:47 GMT
References: <80330004@hpl-opus.hpl.hp.com> <1990Dec16.031022.22166@jwt.UUCP>
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Organization: School of Chemical Sciences, Univ. of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
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In article <1990Dec16.031022.22166@jwt.UUCP> john@jwt.UUCP (John Temples) writes:
>In article <80330004@hpl-opus.hpl.hp.com> knotts@hpl-opus.hpl.hp.com (Tom Knotts) writes:
>>One person said something to me that is really disturbing about Prodigy.
>>He said that using Prodigy is really dangerous because it has the
>>capability to change any file on your hard disk without telling you. He
>>points out that a disgruntled employee could program Prodigy to infect
>>all Prodigy users' machines.
>
>What's so special about Prodigy's software that people are singling
>it out as "dangerous?"  A disgruntled employee at Microsoft could
>program Windows so that it trashed your FAT if it detected a certain
>brand of disk partitioning software.

Yes, but this can only happen once for each porgram you buy - and
it would quickly get out to the whole world if it actually happened
because things like what you attribute to Microsoft are quite 
noticeable. (Like, Microsoft Windows 3.0 really DOES trash your
hard disk if you have a certain brand of disk partitioning software.)
And Microsoft products don't call Microsoft on the phone and 
copy your disk to them.

But Prodigy can do it selectively, at any time they feel like. They can
steal programs off your disk. They can survey your disk to see what
programs are on it, and then, for example, sell your "user profile"
to advertisers who will flood you with junk mail. Etc.

Using Prodigy is exactly like using a Unix system and turning off
ALL forms of protection - let anybody logged on do anything they wish.

If I connect my PC to some other computer, I want to be very sure
that there is some security. Right now I am running Telnet on my PC.
There is no way to log in from the outside. You can, if you wish,
right now, do ftp to my PC. But you need the password. I have no
idea how good the security is but at least it exists.

Doug McDonald