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Subject: Re: Somewhat off-topic: Aureate Spyware hoax

Author: Ricardo Gibert

Date: 11:51:21 03/24/00

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On March 24, 2000 at 11:12:50, Tom Kerrigan wrote:

>On March 24, 2000 at 06:15:29, Tina Long wrote:
>
>>Thanks again for alerting me to this Spyware mob!   "....we assure you that this
>>information is never used...."
>>
>>Bloody Wow!
>
>Hmmm.
>
>It appears that you did not read the entire article, which basically states that
>this "spyware" does not send any useful information anywhere.
>
>-Tom

This "spyware", by Aureals own admission, creates the ability to grab personal
information. Your "does not send any useful information anywhere" is based on
Aureals assurance that this capability is not being abused. Okay so you want to
believe them. That's fine. However, Aureal has created a security hole in
peoples systems and Optout is a means of pluging that hole up. It is a quite
reasonable decision to do so. That may be overly-cautious. On the other hand,
those that are more trusting may be overly gullible. I prefer to err on the side
of being overly-cautious.

There have been more than one articles on the internet referring to peoples
reaction to Aureal as "hysteria", but this ignores the fact that the security
hole created by their software is quite real. I don't understand why anyone
would want stand by and let a security hole persist on their system when there
is a means of fixing it.



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