It is mainly the passport technology and messenger services that are offensive, and these are simple enough to disable yourself. Never set up a passport account no matter how much it begs you, and go to your processes list and set the messenger components to manual start only. -----Original Message----- From: SUNTER Bede I've heard that Windows XP has spyware embedded in it -- that is, softwar= e that enables MS to spy on its users. One assumes that anti-spyware deve= loped by MS would not target MS spyware. Does other anti-spyware zap MS' = spyware? ************************************************** To post a message to austechwriter, send the message to austechwriter@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx To subscribe to austechwriter, send a message to austechwriter-request@xxxxxxxxxxxxx with "subscribe" in the Subject field. To unsubscribe, send a message to austechwriter-request@xxxxxxxxxxxxx with "unsubscribe" in the Subject field. To search the austechwriter archives, go to www.freelists.org/archives/austechwriter To contact the list administrator, send a message to austechwriter-admins@xxxxxxxxxxxxx **************************************************