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From: jerry@matt.ksu.ksu.edu (Jerry J. Anderson)
Newsgroups: comp.org.eff.talk,alt.privacy,alt.censorship
Subject: Re: Prodigy charged with invading users' privacy
Message-ID: <1991May1.015111.6232@maverick.ksu.ksu.edu>
Date: 1 May 91 01:51:11 GMT
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jrbd@craycos.com (James Davies) writes:

>>                                                            He
>>installed and ran Prodigy on a freshly formatted 3.5 inch 1.44 meg
>>disk. Sure enough, upon checking STAGE.DAT he discovered personal data
>>from his hard disk that could not have been left there after an
>>erasure.

>Question: was he using an unused disk, or did he just reformat an old
>one, assuming that it would be wiped clean?

>Could some Prodigy user out there try this experiment again, this
>time using a verifiably empty disk?  I get the feeling that this hasn't
>exactly been a controlled experiment so far...

If you're serious about it, start with a wipedisk.  Then install a
few files without erasing any.  That way, the only non-wiped areas
on the disk will be currently used for files.  If STAGE.DAT and
CACHE.DAT don't come up empty, you'll know something fishy is going
on.

--
                                                  Jerry J. Anderson
                                                  Computing Activities
                                                  Kansas State University
Internet: jerry@ksuvm.ksu.edu                     Manhattan  KS  66506