Windows XP Hacks

Fix Windows Media Player’s Privacy Problems

Lurking beneath Windows Media Player’s slick exterior are potential invasions of your privacy. Here’s how to fix them.

XP’s Windows Media Player Version 8 poses potentially serious privacy problems that, theoretically, could allow Microsoft to track what DVDs you play and could allow for the creation of a supercookie on your PC that would let web sites exchange information about you. There are things you can do, however, to protect your privacy when you use Windows Media Player.

If you use Windows Media Player to play DVD movies, whenever a new DVD is played, Media Player contacts a Microsoft server and gets the DVD’s title and chapter information. The server, in turn, identifies your specific version of Media Player, uses a cookie to identify the DVD you’re watching, and then records information about the DVDs you watch on to a database on your hard disk in C:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Application Data\Microsoft\Media Index.

Microsoft claims that the cookie used is an anonymous one that can’t personally identify you. The company also says that it does not keep track of what DVDs individuals watch, and that the database created on your PC is never accessed from the Internet. Instead, the company says, it’s used only by your own computer; the next time you put a DVD in your drive that you’ve played before, Media Player will get information from that database instead of getting it from a Microsoft web server.

Still, Microsoft has ...