Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!rpi!usc!sdd.hp.com!spool.mu.edu!sol.ctr.columbia.edu!emory!gatech!taco!hobbes.catt.ncsu.edu!kdarling From: kdarling@hobbes.catt.ncsu.edu (Kevin Darling) Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.misc Subject: Re: Anyone using prodigy with an AMIGA? (long) Message-ID: <1991May7.154936.17734@ncsu.edu> Date: 7 May 91 15:49:36 GMT References: <1991May02.160135.20734@convex.com> <1991May5.205134.665@bilver.uucp> <1991May7.001840.8440@bilver.uucp> <62040@masscomp.westford.ccur.com> Sender: news@ncsu.edu (USENET News System) Distribution: na Organization: North Carolina State University Lines: 25 >| FYI, forwarded to me by a Prodigy user. I reccomend using extreme >| caution with this service for the reasons outlined below. >| [...] >| I received a call from someone from another user group who read our >| newsletter and is very involved in telecommunications. 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. He had a very >| [...] As I mentioned before (!), the other possibility is that data previously read into memory is being sent out to disk along with the Prodigy data. If these users really want to check, they should FIRST SHUT OFF THEIR COMPUTER for a long while, take out their huge startup files, and try again. I would bet they no longer get "personal" data in the Prodigy files, but only whatever had been read in on boot. And even that's not a perfect test: if they have some weirdo caching program, then extra unrelated disk data may still be brought into memory and shot back out. I'd really rather hear facts from a _real_ computer expert who checks this out... instead of reports from users who don't know how their machine is set up or operates. best - kev