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?

[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.