Off-Topic :
Fairfax Underground
Welcome to Fairfax Underground, a project site designed to improve communication among residents of Fairfax County, VA. Feel free to post anything Northern Virginia residents would find interesting.
Welcome to Fairfax Underground, a project site designed to improve communication among residents of Fairfax County, VA. Feel free to post anything Northern Virginia residents would find interesting.
Using real downloader transmits your info when you download
Posted by:
realllyreal
()
Date: December 14, 2012 02:20PM
As you will see on the page below, if you use the RealNetworks RealDownload, Netscape/AOL Smart Download, or NetZip Download Demon utilities in their default configuration . . .
EVERY TIME you use one of these utilities to download ANY FILE from ANYWHERE on the Internet, the complete "URL address" of the file, along with a UNIQUE ID TAG that has been assigned to YOUR machine, and — in the case of Netscape's SmartDownload only — YOUR computer's individual Internet IP address, is immediately transmitted to the program's publisher.
This allows a database of your entire, personal, file download history to be assembled and uniquely associated with your individual computer . . . for whatever purpose the program's publishers may have today, or tomorrow.
VERY IMPORTANT: When I re-examined my findings in the face of RealNetworks' insistence that I was absolutely wrong about my conclusions, I caught something that I had missed before: My exact personal name and private eMail address was being sent back to RealNetworks whenever I downloaded a file. When I confronted RealNetworks with this, they explained that it was due to the fact that I had purchased a product from them in the past, and the "cookie" my system had received during the purchase was being returned to them.
That certainly makes file downloads seem far less "anonymous" than RealNetworks continues to allege.
EVERY TIME you use one of these utilities to download ANY FILE from ANYWHERE on the Internet, the complete "URL address" of the file, along with a UNIQUE ID TAG that has been assigned to YOUR machine, and — in the case of Netscape's SmartDownload only — YOUR computer's individual Internet IP address, is immediately transmitted to the program's publisher.
This allows a database of your entire, personal, file download history to be assembled and uniquely associated with your individual computer . . . for whatever purpose the program's publishers may have today, or tomorrow.
VERY IMPORTANT: When I re-examined my findings in the face of RealNetworks' insistence that I was absolutely wrong about my conclusions, I caught something that I had missed before: My exact personal name and private eMail address was being sent back to RealNetworks whenever I downloaded a file. When I confronted RealNetworks with this, they explained that it was due to the fact that I had purchased a product from them in the past, and the "cookie" my system had received during the purchase was being returned to them.
That certainly makes file downloads seem far less "anonymous" than RealNetworks continues to allege.