I am curious as to how you tested it, were you only looking at pure words, or were you looking at the binary as well? also was it only Microsoft packets you were looking at? I am considering using Binary Browser to see what is being stored/sent. I have not heard about Microsoft transmiting the data once gathered into a couple of files, but like everything there is always a first time. Netscape was one of the first that was found to contain spyware, and I don't know if they still are spyware. The reasons for having spyware in programs that are free are obvious, so they can get some money back in another form by selling personal info to advertisers. But if Microsoft is transmiting it that no one has found it could be for one of two reasons, or both: 1) Extra money (greedy) 2) Government reasons If you decide to question that, why does Microsoft have so many holes that people keep finding? Why even the most sofisitcated sites which obvously have the most secure web servers still get hacked? Of course some people would say that they feel more comfortable that the police and law enforcement have the capiblity to listen in on any electronic conversation, but it is against every citisens consitutional rights to have surveillance on them. In fact you would feel like a terrorist if you knew someone was watching everything you do. and there is no garrentee that the extra power that the government has given themselves, be abused. I tested it out and I did find exactly what he said. I am using Windows 98 and at the time of looking I had Internet explorer 5. I typed in: C:\>CD WINDOWS<ENTER> C:\WINDOWS>CD TEMPOR~1<ENTER> If you do a DIR (shows you the contents of the directory you are currently in) like this: C:\WINDOWS\TEMPOR~1\>DIR<enter> You would find there is nothing listed, however if you then type in c:\WINDOWS\TEMPOR~1\>CD CONTENT.IE5<enter> You are now in a folder that DOS says doesn't exist. if you do a DIR here like this: c:\WINDOWS\TEMPOR~1\CONTENT.IE5\>DIR<enter> You get a listing with index.dat in it. I then typed in: c:\WINDOWS\TEMPOR~1\CONTENT.IE5\>EDIT INDEX.DAT<enter> I was able to find things like my email address, URLs I had visited, my default website, etc. Now that I am using IE 6, I did the work around that it said in the attachment to delete desktop.ini, and the file I had deleted in dos (index.dat) is back there again (recreated thanks to microsoft). I opened it up and it has logged the sites I have just now visited, and has loged what I had justed searched in google. Edit: I used the find utillity to find desktop.ini by going start->Find->Files or folders. Then entered desktop.ini in named text box and set "look in" combo box to "My computer". I then deleted all that was found (which will be back there when I reboot).