Time Warner customer? Dell owner? They might be spying on you...
Tuesday, 21. August 2007, 00:09:35
Note: If you're not a Time Warner cable (RoadRunner rr.com service) customer, then you can ignore this post.
If you ever went through Time Warner's Road Runner Medic download+install for Windows, then you most likely have this Windows NT service process running:
(To check: goto Start> Run... taskmgr, Processes tab)
So what is sprtsvc.exe? Well, luckily, it registers itself under your Services (Start> Run... services.msc) as "SupportSoft Sprocket Service". Searching the web doesn't reveal much information on it, so I decided to poke around...to which I found this folder:
...which contains log files, xml config files, ini files, zip files, etc. I highly recommend that you examine the contents (and modified date/time frequency) of these files (esp. the log files) and judge for yourself.
Personally, it seems Time Warner logs all running processes, network info, hardware info, operating system info and patches, and installed programs, during every system startup, then submits it to http:\\medic.rr.com\global\ over an unencrypted, raw HTTP connection. In addition, the service seems to use Microsoft's BITS to download additional data in the background, unbeknownst to users.
Therefore, I have stopped "SupportSoft Sprocket Service" in services.msc, and set its Startup type to "Manual", instead of "Automatic".
I'll keep monitoring this, and if I discover anything else, I'll update this post. Stay tuned...
If you ever went through Time Warner's Road Runner Medic download+install for Windows, then you most likely have this Windows NT service process running:
sprtsvc.exe
(To check: goto Start> Run... taskmgr, Processes tab)
So what is sprtsvc.exe? Well, luckily, it registers itself under your Services (Start> Run... services.msc) as "SupportSoft Sprocket Service". Searching the web doesn't reveal much information on it, so I decided to poke around...to which I found this folder:
C:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Application Data\SupportSoft\medicsp2\
...which contains log files, xml config files, ini files, zip files, etc. I highly recommend that you examine the contents (and modified date/time frequency) of these files (esp. the log files) and judge for yourself.
Personally, it seems Time Warner logs all running processes, network info, hardware info, operating system info and patches, and installed programs, during every system startup, then submits it to http:\\medic.rr.com\global\ over an unencrypted, raw HTTP connection. In addition, the service seems to use Microsoft's BITS to download additional data in the background, unbeknownst to users.
Therefore, I have stopped "SupportSoft Sprocket Service" in services.msc, and set its Startup type to "Manual", instead of "Automatic".
I'll keep monitoring this, and if I discover anything else, I'll update this post. Stay tuned...
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WIDGETIZE
rid243 # 28. December 2007, 18:35
Lee Harvey # 28. December 2007, 19:41
Most likely the same support software, though. Still a PITA.
dragonfly5711 # 14. February 2008, 01:16
C:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Application Data\SupportSoft\DellSupportCenter
path to executeable C:\Program Files\Dell Support Center\bin\sprtsvc.exe /service /p dellsupportcenter
Have you found anymore on this? It seems like a legit setup but it uses port80...???
Lee Harvey # 14. February 2008, 15:57
I'll update the title of this blog entry to include Dell.
Thanks for the feedback.