From: Mike Ingle <MIKEINGLE@delphi.com>
Date: Fri, 4 Feb 94 14:25:16 PST
To: cypherpunks@toad.com
Subject: Re: Prodigy snooping
Message-ID: <01H8GY0YK46W91W1I6@delphi.com>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain


>I heard from a friend that Prodigy was scanning user's hard drives. 
>Basically, when you logged on Prodigy made a complete directory of your
>hard drive and uploaded it.  Prodigy was using this to find out what
>applications you used so they could direct the appropriate advertising
>towards you.  Apparently, they're suffering several lawsuits now because
>of it.

This tale has been around for a while. Prodigy makes a huge file, over
1 MB, on your hard drive and stores information there to speed up the data
transfer. People started finding bits of their files in there. They
claimed that Prodigy was snooping into their systems. Prodigy denied it
and claimed that their software just didn't bother to clear the disk space
when it allocated it, so whatever was there, stayed there until the space
was used. They distributed a utility which would zero out that information.
Whether they were really snooping or not, who knows? If they were, they
were pretty stupid to leave clear text in the file.
 
>My friend heard this on the trailing end of a radio talk show.  If it was
>really happening, it sounds horrible.  Could Secure Drive be set up to
>stop this kind of attack?

Secure Drive would stop it if you weren't logged into the encrypted drive
when you ran Prodigy. Of course, if you were logged in and they knew about
Secure Drive, they could get your encryption key as well as your data...

--- Mike