In article <9509290026.AA08282@toad.com>, csmyth@blaze.cs.jhu.edu (Chris Smyth) writes:
It is true that a user automatically contacts the Netscape Web cite when starting the browser if he or she has not reset the default home page. I reset my home page long ago, but I do not know if the Netscape site is still contacted anyway. Nor do I know if Netscape is contacted when I quit the browser, or if elapsed usage time is tracked.
We are counting unique installations of netscape. We have no way of mapping that information to a user name. We don't save any information about you when you contact our web site. The Navigator doesn't make connections to our site behind your back.
The future Clark posits for his corporation depends on people adopting Netscape software for a wide variety of tasks. He wants the browser to evolve toward being a general multimedia web browser, mail handler, newsreader, and collaboration tool. Such a tool would handle large amounts of private and/or proprietary information and the creator of such a tool must be extremely sensitive to privacy concerns in my opinion. Collecting and relaying information about usage is potentially a significant violation of the privacy users will expect.
We are very sensitive to privacy concerns. A bunch of folks now working here revolted against an effort to track keystrokes and mouse clicks in Mosaic while they were at NCSA. One of those folks was marca himself. --Jeff -- Jeff Weinstein - Electronic Munitions Specialist Netscape Communication Corporation jsw@netscape.com - http://home.netscape.com/people/jsw Any opinions expressed above are mine.