People who know gov't secrets perhaps? Or maybe they just want to be comepletionists?

Ok, this goes back to the silly interwebs thing.

Let's say I'm a hacker and I want to get dirt on some big organization.
So for the next several weeks I sit here at the computer burying myself under multiple proxies and have gone through all other efforts to mask my identity so that I can get into that organizations database to retrieve what I want.

You better believe that organization has been watching me set this up this whole time through a shell to see what I did and how I went about doing it.

The whole 'spy' thing is hilarious - Refer to the old conspiracy television series "The Prisoner" - the organization the spy was sent to spy on was watching the spy spying on them the whole time.

How silly would you feel hiding behind a wall and sneaking peeks around at some one in the next room watching TV only to find that what they're watching on TV is security camera footage of you sneaking peeks at them from around the wall?

The gov't/etc monitor people but it mostly goes into databases no one checks much up on unless you set off a red flag by doing something over-the-top/criminal/suspicious(like googling bomb making tips all day long).....then they go to their databases and look into you and actually read all that info they've compiled.

Usually though they might have info on you and stuff you do but not be aware of exactly what they have until they bother to look into their files....which unless you do something to set off their radars(as said above) may never even happen.

I promise you, there are very few big corps that are remotely capable of what you're describing. Yeah there's a few, but it's excruciatingly rare. Trust me, the average corp has trouble writing and deploying an average webapp using 3-5 year old technology. There's no secret hotbed of super hackers monitoring their inner sanctum.

If they ever catch anyone for doing what you're describing it's by doing reactive detective work and getting lucky enough to find enough breadcrumbs to follow back to the perpetrator.

/facepalm again. Dude, really check out wikipedia's page about .NET. PLEASE! :) /facepalm What .NET application?

/facepalm To what is .NET connected?

/facepalm .NET doesn't offer any scanning whatsoever nor it monitors what you do.

/facepalm Just use Daz's tool, and you'd be done with 'pirating' Windows.

.NET is NOT an application or whatever. It is a library of classes and other stuff that developers can use to make games, desktop applications, Windows Phone applications, web services, connect with databases, and do many other things. /facepalm

Of course it would be mandatory, for fuck's sake, it provides the runtime required to run the Autodesk programs / many games from Steam.

It is not a DRM platform, fucking LOL!
Why? :(
Well said! :D

Meh.

I just note this stuff for people having similar issues that might be googling around a couple years from now.

Last year I was monitoring an ATI forum wondering if my card was causing all the crashes. I saw about six threads from people suspecting the video card and sixty replies stating no - the card was perfect.

Replaced the card and haven't had any issues.

So many parts of an OS sending privacy related information back to it's creator for no other reason than profiling customers and subsequently making money out of that. I'm paying them for their product, that should be enough. Especially with the profit margin on Windows.
Why should they know which movies I watch with WMP (not using that for that reason)?
Why was Windows Messenger (not MSN) activated by default while that quite a big security and privacy risk, not to mention at that time it was mostly useful for people maintaining networks in large(r) organizations?
Etc.

corporations can hardly handle refilling candy machines in the break room. I would mail them my secret information and they would not know what to do with it...

Windows Media Player is the new spyware now?

Really loving some of the stuff you guys post around here. This is way better than the conspiracy theories movies.

Goddamn...you actually made me LOL.


Seriously, a couple of you guys may have an actual psychosis. Holy crap.

I know the reputation of my country when it comes to drugs.
Quite funny you post that, as if there's 1 country in the EU concerned about privacy it's yours.

It's not something new, it's from 2002.
Except for sending info back to MS about all movies watched with WMP, WMP is also sending out a unique ID which can be used by websites to identify you. It's more precise than tracking cookies as those can be erased.
I haven't kept up with this, so I have no idea how it is in the current version. A few years ago it was still there.

You might prefer to be naive, others like to prefer to be careful. I'm very much aware I leave traces on the internet, still I try to minimize it.
This has nothing to do with conspiracy theories. The more information, the better profiling they can do, the better they can target advertisements, the more money they make.