Will the real Big Brother please stand up - Bill Gates ??
I believe that Microsoft, the software company that dominates our computers today, is spying on us all. All of us, that is, that have Microsoft products installed on our computers and surely that would be at least 99% I should think. Here's some instances of what Mr Gates and his gang are up to (I'll just mention a few, unfortunately it seems there are plenty to choose from.)
Most of us probably use some version of Internet Explorer as our browser - after all it usually comes installed by default when you buy a computer today and many people just use it because it's there. The IE browser is quite user friendly and easy to use but, as I've discovered, it has a dark side. IE indexes every web page you visit, including every graphic, and stores it in a secret folder on your hard disc. Has anyone ever noticed sometimes, when surfing with IE, that the hard disc drive will occasionally whir for a minute or two for no apparent reason? Well, this is when the browser is busy indexing what you are doing! The folder it stores the files in cannot be accessed from windows because it is totally invisible. It can, however, be accessed in DOS mode, (not the DOS in windows, you have to reboot in DOS proper.)
I was shocked when I went into DOS and found a folder that I knew nothing about, containing some 650 MEGS of files, which was in fact my surfing history of about 18 months since I got my current computer! Needless to say, I deleted it there and then using the DELTREE command (luckily I could still remember a few things about DOS.)
Anyone here use Outlook Express for their email? This does a similar nasty to IE - every email you send or receive along with all attachments is automatically stored in another secret folder!
Then there's Microsoft Word, the very popular word processor that also often comes ready-installed, or bundled with computers. What does this do? Yep - you've guessed - it secretly saves all your Word documents in yet ANOTHER secret file.
Then of course, there's the Windows operating System itself. Many of the little programs it runs have little built-in spying devices it seems - there really is no escape from this with a Windows system and the later the version, the worse it gets.
Why is Microsoft doing this you may ask? Well I can only hazard a guess, but maybe the FBI or some agency has persuaded Uncle Bill to put these little programs in place on his software to make it easier to keep us under surveillance - after all his company dominates the world in the software market and also, of course, has a huge presence on the internet.
There are plenty of alternatives to using Microsoft products of course. I've ditched Outlook Express and I now use Eudora. I still use IE because I'm used to it but I just go and delete the hidden files every now and then, but Netscape and Opera are good alternatives. It's even possible to dump the Windows operating system altogether and use Linux.
I would think that Mr Woodchuck and Cwohardy know quite a bit on what I'm talking about here! I know there is some good software available, such as Historykill, to combat this problem so maybe they can advise.
Here's a web site I found a while ago that told me where to look for the hidden files in DOS. The webmaster of this site is fighting a campaign against all things Microsoft. The entire site makes for interesting and disturbing reading, but if you want to get straight to the part that explains where the hidden files are and how to get rid of them, click on "Microsoft's Really Hidden Files", written by The Riddler, a friend of the webmaster. Sorry about the profanity in the URL btw but believe me, these guys ares deadly serious (and they know what they're talking about.)
This thread's getting weird.