I have IE6 and Win98SE. When in IE, if I go to Tools, Internet Options, Advanced and scroll down, there's the option to Check for server certificate revocation (requires restart)

Now, if I check this and restart, when I try to sign in to hotmail, IE then connects to crl.verisign.net port 80 (iirc, I've not got it checked now).
The thing is, this connection runs at up to 8kbps on my 56k, and as you might know, the average rate is about 4kbps!

This keeps going for at least a minute, and after testing it a few times I stopped, as the data transfer is getting large, and I'm wondering just wtf M$ is getting from my pc at such an unusual rate...
This effect seems only to be with hotmail, with that option enabled. I've run Ad-Aware, kept NAV up to date, and my Tiny Personal Firewall (which is detecting this).

Everything seems to run fine with the option disabled, and it would seem to be a system for making certain of a server's certificate validity, but is it needed for non-M$ servers (can you get non-M$ certificates, I don't know much about them in general) and is it safe to have this setting unchecked?

I'm guessing it's just another M$ 'feature' (bug/spyware/something I've blocked ) but if anyone has any more info, I'd be grateful