IS your computer spying on you? And would you always know if it were?
Over the past few years there have seen several well-publicised incidents
when apparently ordinary software turned out to be sending data about its users’
preferences back to the software’s provider. Back in 2000, for example, it was
the music player Real Jukebox. More recently, privacy organisations such as
Junkbusters have compared Microsoft’s single sign-on Passport embedded in
Windows XP to an “electronic cattle prod to herd consumers into its marketing
databases”.
At least Passport makes itself known to the user. What was insidious about
Real Jukebox…
