Win98 privacy issue

Win98 privacy issue

WIN 98 PRIVACY ISSUE: WORSE THAN YOU THOUGHT

It's not only possible for any website to read information that uniquely identifies you and your PC, but that information can be modified and/or sent to Microsoft without your consent. Last week, Richard Smith of Phar Lap Software first identified a risk with the Registration Wizard, or RegWiz.

Win 98 uses RegWiz to process your product registration form and submit it to a Microsoft server over the Internet. Two identificationnumbers are generated based on your PC configuration and the data you enter during registration. The first number, called the hardware identification number (HWID), can, in most cases, uniquely identify the computer. A second number, called the Microsoft ID (MSID), uniquely identifies a user and is placed in a browser cookie for access to services on Microsoft's website.

RegWiz also includes the ability to send a PC's registration information to Microsoft. This can be triggered from any Web page without the user's consent. Other than disconnecting from the Internet, there is no way for a user to stop the transfer once it has started.

http://www.techweb.com/news/story/TWB19990312S0008