Microsoft is watching your DVDs

[Gservo]

Computer privacy and security consultant Richard Smith has noticed a couple of privacy problems with Microsoft's Windows Media Player for Windows XP. It seems that each time you play a DVD using WMP, it contacts Microsoft to retrieve information about the DVD you are playing. This allows you to get detailed information about the DVD and also see the cover in WMP. This is all good, but the information WMP sends to Microsoft is actually enough for them to track what DVD movies are being watched on a particular computer.
Full story
Media Player for Windows XP Privacy Statement (http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windowsmedia/software/v8/privacy.asp)

[The Therion]

this has to get hacked

[moonraker]

This can be disabled, although it's on by default which I think is out of order. Personally I have stopped using it, there are plenty of other players out there just as good if not better. I also dislike it's disability to encode mp3s at any decent bitrate. MS would rather you made them into wma files, thier proprietary format!

Anyway, you can turn off the part which enables your media player to be uniquely identified.
Fire up media player
Go to Tools/Options/Player
Uncheck the 'Allow Internet Sites to Uniquely Identify Your Player' option.
That's it, spyware mode off.
Or so they say........

[The Therion]

thanks, good thing it has an off switch.....unless it works "behind the scenes" anyway as you mentioned !

[Beaker]

Thanks for the heads up Gservo. Microsoft never ceases to amaze me, I wonder just how much more spyware they can cram into one OS!:mad:

However, I shall spread the word ;)