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From: leng@ruacad.ac.runet.edu (Lud Eng)
Newsgroups: comp.org.eff.talk,alt.privacy,alt.censorship
Subject: Re: Prodigy charged with invading users' privacy
Summary: Don't jump to any conclusions
Keywords: Prodigy, STAGE.DAT, testing
Message-ID: <1991May1.215612.2978@ruacad.ac.runet.edu>
Date: 1 May 91 21:56:12 GMT
References: <1991Apr30.185752.4913@mnemosyne.cs.du.edu> <1991Apr30.225133.8165@craycos.com> <1991May1.051734.24594@pcserver2.naitc.com>
Organization: Radford University
Lines: 37

In article <1991May1.051734.24594@pcserver2.naitc.com> kdenning@genesis.Naitc.Com (Karl Denninger) writes:
>Alternately, after cleaning the disk, install the Prodigy software on the
>fixed disk.  DO NOT ACCESS ANY OTHER PROGRAMS OR DATA.  Immediately run
>Prodigy, dial in, and use it for a couple of hours.
>
>Then check STAGE.DAT on the fixed disk.  
>
>Since you zeroed all unallocated areas on the drive before you began, there
>is no way the STAGE.DAT file could have gotten private data in it unless the
>software is scanning your fixed disk drive.
>
>This should provide rather conclusive proof one way or the other.

Karl,

   As someone else pointed out, this is not conclusive.  Due to the way
the Prodigy software works, it may well be trying to buffer to the hard
drive even if it's not installed there.  If there is indeed a bug in it,
I guess it's possible that instead of reading from the buffer file it would
write random things read from random places on the drive to the temp file.
I do not subscribe to Prodigy either, but this is at least possible, depending
on how it's written.  

  People have been talking about STAGE.DAT files in excess of 900k.  I'm
sorry, but I don't really think that a 900k file is going to be 'secretly'
uploaded in the background while it's drawing windows and menus without you
noticing large delays for no apparent reason, unless you are spending 20
hours a day on the system.  If someone has an external modem, WATCH THE
LIGHTS ON IT!  Look to see if a decent amount of data is being sent while
you are not doing anything (there will probably be some blips of data every
now and then to make sure you're still there and there will probably be ack
packets when you're receiving things, but they will be SMALL - not in the
kilobyte range.)  Better yet, someone should run a TSR to monitor file access
and see just when STAGE.DAT is acccessed.

  Has Prodigy had any solid comments on this?  If it's a bug, I'm sure they
will be quick to send out a new version.