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Just FYI on this whole Microsoft thread (which I'm sick to death of), but a 
while back, when the rumors first started, we (PC Week) attached a Windows 
95 system to sniffer to see what exactly was going out to Microsoft. We saw 
no evidence to back any of the rumors.

This was the message I sent out to the news department. I don't think it 
ever got used anywhere. I work in the Labs and sent this message to the news 
department:

Just FYI, we just tried to confirm the rumors of the on-line registration 
and MSN signup using a serial-line sniffer. We used a notebook with Win95 
(484), MS Office, and Lotus SmartSuite installed.

On-line registration: During the application-collection phase, it only found 
MS Office (not smartsuite). It sent up only what we told it to send -- 
hardware information and the fact that we had MS office installed. Very 
little data goes over the wire during the on-line registration, so we're 
pretty certain about what went up.

MSN: We saw no evidence that it upload our directory contents (as the 
current rumors says). A lot of data goes by during a typical connection to 
MSN, but no application information or directory tree, that we could see. It 
could be compressed or encrypted before sending it, of course, but I 
personally doubt it.

 -Eamonn Sullivan

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