[clug] everyone still calling home?
Eyal Lebedinsky
eyal at eyal.emu.id.au
Sun Jun 28 02:41:33 GMT 2009
I usually use an old CD player attached to my sound system, but today decided
to try and use my system (f9) to see what it does.
On inserting the CD a dialogue pops up offering three programs for handling
the CD. I first selected the default "Rhythmbox music player". I noticed that
it went right away and connected to
stimpy.musicbrainz.org:www
it kept doing so even after I deselcted all plugins and any other options I
considered related.
Next I selected the offered VLC. This one makes a connection to
mirror.freedb.org:8880
again, I did not request it and I unticked anything I deemed related.
The third offer was an extractor which I had no interest in.
I finally used what I know, mplayer, which just played it nicely with:
mplayer cdda:// -cache 5000
Nevertheless, trying to use gnome-mplayer, it went ahead and contacted
mirror.freedb.org:www
adding '--disable_cover_art_fetch' did not help either.
Is it now standard for all (yes, I am generalizing here) programs to call home
(regardless of what excuse is given for it)? Should I keep blocking connections
on my firewall or is there a simple way to say "please do not access the
internet unless I say so"? Some kind of privacy setting somewhere?
So far, kmplayer is the only program I tried that did not make a connection.
--
Eyal Lebedinsky (eyal at eyal.emu.id.au)
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