Trying not to be too paranoid, but it's probably the tip of the iceberg. Go read Orwell's "1984" again, then think about today's move to merge the computer and TV, throw in stuff like aureate (now known as "Radiate"), and you can't help but wonder what other things like this might be out there (surely the government isn't ignorant of this technology). Personally, I have nothing to hide related to my internet activity, but I don't like others anonamously spying on me and collecting information for which they do not have my permission (much less my prior knowledge). I used grc's "optout" and found that I had a number of aureate-type "spy files" working in the background on my system, including from a program that I once thought was a blessing - "GetRight", the popular file downloading facilitator. I have since removed all such programs. I note that many mainstream e-commerce houses are offering to attach similar "download facilitator" files to their online product downloads. Makes you wonder about them too. I guess Big Brother probably could be (is?) watching us afterall. Sad. Very sad. The Internet, the very medium that was supposed to bring freedom of communication to the masses, may turn out to be the ultimate slavekeeper of personal freedoms. And like many evils fostered on society, it was all done initially with the best and most innocent of intentions (i.e., for Radiate, the sincere goal of gathering useful demographic information for advetrisers).

Intel Core I7 3090K 4.5 GhZ (overclocked) 12-meg cache CPU, 32 Gig DDR3 memory, GeoForce GTX680 2gig 256 Bit PCI Express 3.0 graphic card, 3 Western Difgital 7200 rpm 1 Tb SATA Hard Drives