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From: jkp@cs.HUT.FI (Jyrki Kuoppala)
Newsgroups: comp.org.eff.talk,alt.privacy,alt.censorship
Subject: Re: Prodigy charged with invading users' privacy
Keywords: Prodigy, STAGE.DAT, testing
Message-ID: <1991May2.124553.25869@santra.uucp>
Date: 2 May 91 12:45:53 GMT
References: <1991Apr30.185752.4913@mnemosyne.cs.du.edu> <1991Apr30.225133.8165@craycos.com> <1991May1.051734.24594@pcserver2.naitc.com> <1991May1.215612.2978@ruacad.ac.runet.edu>
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Reply-To: jkp@cs.HUT.FI (Jyrki Kuoppala)
Followup-To: comp.org.eff.talk
Organization: Helsinki University of Technology, Finland
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In-Reply-To: leng@ruacad.ac.runet.edu (Lud Eng)

In article <1991May1.215612.2978@ruacad.ac.runet.edu>, leng@ruacad (Lud Eng) writes:
>  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.

Even if data from the stage.dat file isn't routinely copied to the
central system, what proves there isn't a way for the system to do
that ?

I think someone said software updates are done automatically via the
on-line service in Prodigy - if this is true, this makes your files
essentially at most as secret and/or secure from malicious tampering
as the Prodigy system's security, and means that anyone who has access
to the Prodigy system's functionality can do anything to your own
system.

//Jyrki