Internet Big Brothers are Watching You!
Written: Jul 19 '00 (Updated Aug 02 '00)
|
Product Rating:
|
|
|
Pros: OPTOUT Tool lets you control Big Brother's activities.
Cons: They know more about you than you want them to.
|
|
|
| Schinjay's Full Review: Archived Computers & Internet Reviews |
Internet Big Brothers Know Who You Are
They Know Exactly Where You Have Been
OPTOUT Helps You Give Them The Boot
As if the Orewellian aura of an oppressive Big Brother wasn’t enough to scare the bejeebers out of us. Guess what! He’s back, and he’s brought his overbearing extended family with him. And what they’re doing now is even scarier than what anyone could imagine back in 1984.
Recent reports have revealed that some of the most popular download utilities in use today are daily phoning home, beaming to their masters complete information on who you are and where you’ve been, building a complete personal download history of everyone using their craftily designed software package. Orwell’s darkest Minitrue had nothing over the atrocities being perpetrated against our personal privacy by today’s Big Brothers of the Internet.
From the depth of their own virtual Oceania, RealNetworks “RealDownload”, AOL/Netscape’s “Smart Download” and NetZip’s “Download Demon” have been proved, in lab tests performed by Steve Gibson (GRC.com), to report back home each time files were downloaded from even his own website.
Mr. Gibson used what was called a very common “packet sniffer” to monitor the activity from his own test system and he was astonished at what he found. He discovered that amongst the information being phoned home was a unique “tag” number used to identify his computer and his machine’s IP address. This happened every time he downloaded a file from any site on the Internet.
This is our modern day “Two Minute Hate”! What does all this mean, Winston? Getting very specific, Mr. Gibson explained in his report that he was able to decipher from the intercepted packet the exact URL he visited; the name of each of the files he clicked on to download; the internal name he was using for his test system; the time, date and specific IP address he was operating from. I don’t remember giving anyone permission to do this on my computer, do you?
Gibson then proves to us that he is almost too intelligent. I hope this doesn’t get him vaporized! In his tests he shutdown his system and rebooted several times between downloads, and the information strings in the subsequent packets sent out remained the same. This told him that a very persistent “tag” was being used to ID his system each time he performed a download.
After receiving threats from the likes of RealNetworks that he was completely wrong in his statements about their product, Gibson set out to re-test everything to assure himself he was not mistaken. What he found in his next round of trials was even worse!
He downloaded fresh copies of the offending software packages and went through his series of tests again. What he noticed this time was that in addition to the data mentioned above being phoned home, he found that RealNetworks’ RealDownload also sent along his “real” first and last name and his “real” e-mail address. WOW!
Not only was this information being sent home, but it was done so in unsecured plain text that anyone could intercept and use to their own devices. It turns out that this information is included in an unsecured plain text cookie placed on your system when you make a purchase from RealNetworks. But inclusion of this data in such an insecure manner in a message beamed back home is not what these bad boys claim is happening in our systems!
So, how can these Internet giants do this? Well, they covered their rears pretty well on this one. Deep within the fine print of the license agreements for several of these products, it is found that we did indeed “agree” to allow these companies to collect whatever information about us that they desired. But a lot of the language appears to be very contradictory and vague.
The NetZip “Download Demon” license contains the statement…”No unique identifier or personally identifiable information is sent with this information.” This seems to very misleading, doesn’t it? Seeing as they are indeed uniquely identifying every system using their program. I wonder how many of the 14 million or so NetZip users know this is going on? Now many, I bet!
Apparently RealNetworks realized this was rather like lying! So they simply removed the statement from their license that claimed there wasn’t any identifying going on. They didn’t stop doing it, mind you. They just stopped saying they weren’t going to do it.
We are left to wonder just what these virtual modern day Ministries of Truth are doing with all of this information they aren’t telling us they are collecting? If these Big Brothers don’t care about us as individuals then why are they tagging each of our computers in some unique way? Just what are they up to? We don’t know and don’t expect a statement of explanation from them any time soon.
For your own peace of mind you might want to check in on the reported class action suit being brought against Netscape/AOL for their version of “Smart Download” spyware. And keep Mr. Gibson’s website GRC.com in mind.
He has a wonderful free applet, OPTOUT, that you can download and run on your own system to detect many versions of current spyware programs that might be phoning home your personal data right now. He will be updating OPTOUT soon to detect these aforementioned download utilities. It will be up to you as to whether you feel victimized enough by their presence to put them out from your castle.
So, as our sordid story comes to a close, we relax in our favorite seat at the Chestnut Tree Café, sip at our Victory Gin and match our chess aptitude with someone we may have betrayed in our past. Waiting for the bullet that may end our individuality; our privacy. We hate Big Brother.
8/02/00 Update – In cooperation with RealNetworks’ technicians, Mr. Gibson was able to determine that the information package sent home by “RealDownload” was indeed a standard Windows GUID derived from the Windows working environment. Apparently RealNetworks wasn’t particularly aware of just how their software was working and was very surprised at learning about this.
As of this writing RealNetworks has posted a new downloadable version of RealDownload at their site which omits this GUID from their phoned home package. Thus, the packet being sent back does not include the same user tracking information it did at one time.
Users beware that older versions of this software will continue their old insecure ways. The sooner you download the latest version, the better.
That's my epinion! Mahalo for stopping by!
Recommended:
No
|
|
|
|
Epinions.com ID:
Schinjay
|
|
Member: Steve Schindler
Location: San Antonio, Texas
Reviews written: 37
Trusted by: 57 members
About Me:
Steve Schindler writes his informative and humorous "Schindler's Cyber List" for epinions.com.
|
|
|
- Add to My Yahoo!: 
- Add to Google Homepage: 
© 1999-2009 Shopping.com, Inc.