Big Brother OS

[Tenacious]

Yesterday, I was visiting a customer and our discussion turned to a certain popular industrial PLC manufacturer.  For years they have supplied the bulk of their application-editing and networking software on CD and the software keyfile seperated onto floppy (the keyfile completes the installation).

I was told that they will soon do away with the floppy and issue the keyfile over the net.  Here's the kicker, their server will poll your system and record the serial number of your harddrive!  What's to keep anyone on the net reading your entire registry?

Is it me, or is any one else alarmed that the most popular OS will play the role of Big Brother and report user information back over the net.  In truth, spying on people.

I have been concerned about this for years, but this is the first confirmation I've heard.  I'm actually not surprised.

My questions, how far has this gone and how far will it?  I imagine OS X does this too, but does Linux?

[krize]

Ofcourse doesnt Linux do this. MacOsX i dont know about.

[monami]

take a look in the book of revelation. it'll be the mark of the beast next...

[-BobW-]

This has nothing to do with the OS and everything to do with crappy vendors.  

I supported Rockwell and Modicon PLC systems for a few years and those key disks can be a royal pain.  There is nothing like having a harddrive go at midnight on a Saturday and having the Rockwell tech tell you that they need to mail you a new key disk because yours has gone bad.  Uh, production is down and we are losing thousands of dollars because I have a bad floppy?

That happened to me once and after that I always had a backup of the key disk.

As far as their servers reading my machines...  Over my dead body.  Good luck on getting onto my network and through the firewall the protects my PLC subnet.

[reflect]

Another well-known OS has its applications call home and report what movies/music you're listening to, without letting you know this. This particular application comes from the OS vendor itself. This is just an example, but it still amazes me that it's not seen as a bigger deal.

[Tripitaka]

-BobW- wrote:
Good luck on getting onto my network and through the firewall the protects my PLS subnet.

I like your style Bob! Big bro is getting a bit scary for a lot of us I think. Try having a chat with any military types about spy satellite resolutions, they can read your newspaper buddy!! that's bad enough. Then of course there is TEMPEST, CCTV, RFID etc...

We are so spied on it's silly !! If big bro wasn't bad enough  how about the con-man with an RFID scanner? How many shoppers out there protect the data on there credit cards? The list goes on and on.......

....TRUST NO ONE!!  :inquisitive:

[jorkany]

Tenacious,

I was told that they will soon do away with the floppy and issue the keyfile over the net. Here's the kicker, their server will poll your system and record the serial number of your harddrive! What's to keep anyone on the net reading your entire registry?

Just out of curiosity, what does this have to do with the OS? More than likely, the vendor will supply you with software that does this by reporting back to the "mothership" and isn't something inherent in the OS itself.

However, this is a really bad policy on the part of the vendor. You might remember some tax software from a few years ago that did something similar; they responded to the overwhelming negative consumer backlash by backpedaling away from the offensive technology. I've noted that manufacturing software vendors are pretty bad about this - they can more easily get away with it because they tend to have a captive market which consists of a very small number of fairly loyal customers. Some vendors still even use *dongles* of all things!

Probably the best thing to do in this case is contact the vendor and let them know you won't be buying from them again  because you can't trust their scanning software. After all, yours is a business which has secrets which need to be protected, and opening the barn door to an outside agency accessing a machine on your internal network just isn't acceptable. Then follow through and buy from a competitor who isn't using such a draconian copy protection scheme.

[AMC258]

What's to keep anyone on the net reading your entire registry?

Simple.  Don't have a registry, have an ENVARC: :-D  :-D  :-D  :lol:  :-D

[jrkenn]

I just had to get in on this. Putting OS aside for a moment,
If you have a Cell phone, digital addressable cable box and surf the net then they already know who you talked to last night, what you watched on TV last night and who you called at lunch yesterday. My theory has always been what technology is out in the public is already obsolete to the powers that be. This topic could have an entire forum to itself. LOL

[Tenacious]

It's probably an illusion that any OS belongs to the user/purchaser, perhaps even open source OSs.

@ Krize

How do you know that Linux (or some app you are running on it) doesn't do this?

@ reflect

I avoid that music player (begins eye_____) for that reason and many others (I even know people who use it in Winders).  Removing it from the HD still leaves me uncertain that the OS serves only me.  When you write a CD, how does anyone know that the originating computer, HD S/N, and the user are not encoded into the CD.  

The dividing line for me is using an OS that only accesses the HD when I tell it to.  I'm willing to make some (small to me) sacrifices for that peace of mind.  I've never seen this, but, if disk access suddenly went wild while online, it would be clear that something was up.

I wonder if MakeCD encodes it's registered user and other info into a CD.

[XDelusion]

 Well you do realize that the Gates family was a "Made" family long before Billy boy and his alleged stroke of luck in the computer world. They are in bed and have been with the "royal" families of the world for quite some time. Just like there ancestors the Oil Barons of the 19th century shaped the modern world into what it is (profit and control centric), these ancestors such as Billy boy carry on that torch.



 Also Billy boy is a firm supporter of Eugenics and funds money for global depopulation in it's many forms.

[robo-ant]

I was told that they will soon do away with the floppy and issue the keyfile over the net. Here's the kicker, their server will poll your system and record the serial number of your harddrive!

There's a compiler I use at work that doesn't function until it is registered on the net, and when it registers it calculates a number based on the hardware it's installed on.  I seem to have got away with changing the hard drive, but the software stopped working when I disabled ethernet from the BIOS.

The OS isn't at fault here.  It's the vendor.

Some vendors still even use *dongles* of all things!

The company I work for uses dongles.  I don't have a problem with that in the market I'm in (industrial control and plant management).  I would not want that for any sofware I might use myself at home, though.

[Colani1200]

Tenacious wrote:

How do you know that Linux (or some app you are running on it) doesn't do this?

Firewalling, sniffing (like you'd do with the other OS mentioned here). If you're still unsure, have a look at the source (impossible with the others).