OMG! Micro$oft spying on us???

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Originally posted here by daxmax
You have to remember that when you access a particular domain all cookies from that domain will be stored in one place.
So if you access hotmail.com and login. The login information ( if you click on Remember me) will store the info to your browser's cookie.
Any other access to hotmail.com will always use the same cookie file which means all info is stored on the same cookie. The system all that it does is use these cookies to remember you.
Maybe you should either
a. use no cookies for that site.
b. look at your prefs in your hotmail account.
c. Use different browsers to view different sites
d. Delete your cookies for M$N.

good point. i think you have no choice but to use cookies with hotmail.
any of you have info about building outlook express plugins? i mean outlook express, not microsoft outlook. i couldn't find much info on the subject.
also do you guys know of any way of intercepting the cookie requests and have a process handle them instead of letting them at the discretion of IE/outlook?

Quote:

Originally posted here by ammo
Hum, right...
Don't you think that if they really wanted to "profile" and spy on you they'd just cross-reference your IP with account logons?

- there are many public places with hotmail access. how smart would it be to cross-reference by IP hundreds of mailboxes.
- there are NAT devices used in corporations that prevent them to locate and track a single computer. via NAT you may have a different IP when you log into your next hotmail account.
- also with dialup an IP is being re-used by others as part of a DHCP pool so they would actually cross-reference a network instead of a single computer.
- I could use changeable proxies too... so I DO have choices in that case.

but when you use outlook and hit "Send / Receive All" you have no way of preventing the cross-reference that's made via cookie to be sent along to them. they retrieve the whole cookie. and you MUST use cookies with hotmail

(at first I thought that I was checking only ONE email address but actually I've checked the others before, so the cookie had info about the other accounts already)

Quote:

I mean, jumping from "OE logs on to all hotmail accounts at once" to "OMG MS is spying on me!!!" is a pretty big step to make...

actually it was ":D OMG! M$ spying on us???" if you can feel the ironic difference... i thought others may want to know, talk, and scan the damn M$ until their servers go down :)

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Besides, if you're really so worried about your pricacy, you might want to read the privacy statements from msn and ms passport ... You might not want to use hotmail at all after that!

Anyways...

Ammo

i really don't care about them snooping my emails as long as they can't associate the contents with my true identity. they can profile a ghost as much as they want.
again, my point was that cookies help them cross-reference all my accounts so they could build a profile of me as a person by knowing all my accounts at once including the one bearing my name. there's no such thing in their privacy statement saying that they WILL cross-reference all my accounts with them via cookies. how do i know that they don't sell my profile info to spammers or agencies or FBI or CIA or even Bush may see my emails and call my wife to tell her that I surfed for porn! OMG!

why do I still use hotmail? cause i can read my emails with the same client that i use for pop3 accounts -outlook- and that's already a commodity for fat as$es like me :)

but it's not only about me, there are millions of users who use to think they're "anonymous" behind hotmail. since it's free and useable from outlook most want to use it AND keep their privacy. some could be public persons, CEOs whatever and they want to have a private life too