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From: dale@cec2.wustl.edu (Dale Frye)
Newsgroups: comp.org.eff.talk,alt.privacy,alt.censorship
Subject: Re: Prodigy charged with invading users' privacy (was Re: Lifestyle Information ( was Re: Safeway Stores to Accept Charge)
Message-ID: <1991May1.210740.19958@cec1.wustl.edu>
Date: 1 May 91 21:07:40 GMT
References: <1991Apr30.184714.4675@mnemosyne.cs.du.edu> <1991Apr30.185752.4913@mnemosyne.cs.du.edu> <1991May01.024205.13181@ddsw1.MCS.COM>
Organization: Washington University, St. Louis MO
Lines: 46

In article <1991May01.024205.13181@ddsw1.MCS.COM> zane@ddsw1.MCS.COM (Sameer Parekh) writes:
>
>	Thank you for posting that.  I had previously thought that Prodigy
>was simply a dumb service.  Now I am committed to the education of people to
>stop using Prodigy.  I will be writing an 'information sheet' which I will
>distribute so that we can educate those who are not on the net.  I will post
>it here first so that I may get feedback on how it is.
>	(I didn't hear about it from this post, a friend who obviously read
>this post told me about it.)

The evidence presented so far has been in a word "SHODDY". Before you go making
statements about this matter I would advise you to investigate more fully.
Telling people not to use this service because of a supposely found problem 
that later turns out to be false opens the possibility of being sued for LIBEL.
You could be sued for loss of revenue for each and every user you convince to
discontinue or not use the service. This includes lost advertising revenue.

The "litmus" tests I have seen so far are invalid. They show a lack of
understanding of all the possible ways for this to happen (and there are many!)

The proper test should be:

1: wipe the hard disk clean -- i.e. low level reformat or wipedisk etc.
    Note: This should be done to any and all disks, partitions, etc on the
          system. (Or remove them)
2: insure all disks are clean!!
3: install test files to look for(if needed).
    Do not delete anything. Do not use any disk compressor.
    Just copy the files onto the disk.
4: POWER OFF the machine. Wait 10 min. (Yes, 10 MIN!)
5: Turn machine on and verify memory is clear.
    Don't do anything except what is listed here. Especially don't go looking
    at files. Don't do anything that might bring a file into memory or a disk
    buffer.
6: install prodigy
7: run prodigy for a period of time (1 hour or so)
8: NOW check the STAGE.DAT file.

An even better test would to be to monitor the data being sent back to Prodigy.
 

Dale Frye
Washington University in St. Louis

P.S. I'm not trying to defend Prodigy. I just hate it when people go off half
cocked.