On Sat, 10 Jan 2004, Richard L. Proctor wrote:

> > To be fair, to date Microsoft has not (to my knowledge) used or abused
> > either one of these items, but certainly they put them in their EULA for
> > a reason.
>
> The only way they can access your computer is if you have no firewall,  if so,
> then you might consider looking into security.  You do give them permission
> to access your computer "if" you are connected to their update services.
>
> Out of curiosity, what makes you think that just because Microsoft has a
> EULA that would abuse it, and how do you know that up2date or yast, or
> what ever other services you may connect to, don't already do this, but
> just tell you about it?

You can run the up2date or yast via a systrace mechanism to see what it
does. And the code is available to review.

   Jeremy C. Reed
   http://www.reedmedia.net/