Path: utzoo!telecom-request Date: 29 Apr 91 17:48:19 GMT From: Toby Nixon Newsgroups: comp.dcom.telecom Subject: Re: Prodigy or Fraudigy ??? Message-ID: Organization: Hayes Microcomputer Products, Norcross, GA Sender: Telecom@eecs.nwu.edu Approved: Telecom@eecs.nwu.edu X-Submissions-To: telecom@eecs.nwu.edu X-Administrivia-To: telecom-request@eecs.nwu.edu X-Telecom-Digest: Volume 11, Issue 316, Message 1 of 12 Lines: 54 In article , overlf!emanuele@kb2ear. ampr.org (Mark A. Emanuele) posted a BBS file containing hysterical raving about Prodigy supposedly snooping through user's disks, uploading and processing confidential information. This is nonsense. The STAGE.DAT file is allocated in large chunks according to the level of usage of the service and the number of different areas you visit. The Prodigy software requests the space from DOS, which allocates it from areas of the disk which previously contained other files. DOS does not erase the old information -- and neither does the Prodigy software. But the Prodigy software does not READ sectors to which it has not first WRITTEN. Any non-Prodigy information in the STAGE.DAT file is left over from deleted files, in sectors to which the Prodigy software has not yet written. Remember that even formatting a disk does not remove old information! I was involved in early beta testing of Prodigy, was a charter member, and have watched HOURS of Prodigy traffic on data line monitors. I have NEVER seen any information transmitted that was not typed by the user, or originated within the software. I've never seen ANYTHING that even remotely gave me the impression that information from previously-delete files was being transmitted. The idea that Prodigy is slow because they're using bandwidth to upload confidential information for analysis is just wrong. Watch your modem lights! Only tiny little bursts of transmission are sent. MOST of the time, the line is completely idle in both directions. The simple fact is that Prodigy is slow because the software is SLOW (it was written in anticipation of us all having very fast CPUs, video cards, and modems before too much longer), not because of some sinister conspiracy to invade our private files. Who could honestly believe that two companies who are big fat targets for lawsuits would do something so supremely stupid and easily detectable? No, the biggest mistake Prodigy made was in not wiping clean newly-allocated disk space in order to remove any questions in this regard -- and I suspect that the next Prodigy software update will do just that, considering the amount of noise that has been generated over this non-issue. We should all be concerned about privacy, but this is grossly misplaced paranoia. Toby Nixon, Principal Engineer | Voice +1-404-840-9200 Telex 151243420 Hayes Microcomputer Products Inc. | Fax +1-404-447-0178 CIS 70271,404 P.O. Box 105203 | UUCP uunet!hayes!tnixon AT&T !tnixon Atlanta, Georgia 30348 USA | Internet hayes!tnixon@uunet.uu.net [Moderator's Note: Thanks for an excellent rebuttal, but not everyone sees it quite the same as yourself. See the next message for another thought on this topic. And is there a logical reason for the traipzing back and forth between the C and D drives, as per the next item? PAT]