Path: utzoo!attcan!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!swrinde!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!usc!ucsd!ucbvax!agate!ronzoni.berkeley.edu!raymond
From: raymond@ronzoni.berkeley.edu (Raymond Chen)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.ibm.pc.misc
Subject: Re: Is Prodigy safe to use?
Message-ID: <1990Dec17.182900.14828@agate.berkeley.edu>
Date: 17 Dec 90 18:29:00 GMT
References: <80330004@hpl-opus.hpl.hp.com> <1990Dec16.031022.22166@jwt.UUCP>
Sender: usenet@agate.berkeley.edu (USENET Administrator)
Followup-To: poster
Organization: U.C. Berkeley
Lines: 30

In article <1990Dec16.031022.22166@jwt.UUCP> john@jwt.UUCP (John Temples) writes:
>What's so special about Prodigy's software that people are singling
>it out as "dangerous?"  A disgruntled employee at Microsoft could
> [do nasty things].

Scenario 1:  

I bought Windows a few months ago.  Works fine.
Today, a Microsoft employee gets disgruntled and embeds a time bomb
in Windows 3.0.  My copy of Windows will not be affected because
I bought it before he got disgruntled.

Scenario 2:
I bought Prodigy a few months ago.  Works fine.
Today, a Prodigy employee gets disgruntled and embeds a time bomb
in the Prodigy software.  My copy of Prodigy _will_ be affected
even though I bought it before he got disgruntled.

The difference:

When I buy Windows, I open myself to disgruntlement only once, namely
at the moment I purchase the software.

When I buy Prodigy, I open myself to disgruntlement _every_time_I_log_on_,
because Prodigy automatically downloads new versions of the Prodigy
software when I log on.  Essentially, I am involuntarily upgrading
to the most recent version of Prodigy.

For more details, please read the Risks articles I referenced in a 
previous article.