Software that can spy on you

Why did Mattel include technology that can encrypt and send data to and from your PC in its children's CD-ROMs?

By Simson Garfinkel

Jun 15, 2000 | I was reading my e-mail somewhere over the Atlantic when my laptop tried to go online. I was in the middle of composing a rather lengthy e-mail, so I didn't think about it much. I just put Windows back into "work offline" mode and kept typing. But a moment later, I discovered that the laptop was back in online mode. Indeed, I soon discovered that no matter what I did, I couldn't keep the laptop in offline mode; it was determined to stay online.

Since I was running Windows, I did the normal thing you do when you encounter problems: I rebooted. But exactly the same thing happened when Windows came back up a few minutes later. So I started hunting around the laptop's operating system to see what was going on, and I discovered that a program called "DSSAgent" was silently running in the background. I killed the program with the Windows task manager and my computer started working normally.

Problem solved, I guess, but now I was curious. A little more investigation revealed that my computer's Windows registry had been modified to launch this DSSAgent program whenever the computer started up. The program itself had been hidden deep within my Windows directory, apparently designed to look like a system file. Further investigation revealed that the DSSAgent had been written by Brøderbund and had been installed when my daughter loaded an Arthur's Reading Race CD-ROM onto my laptop the previous weekend.

There were thunderstorms over my destination, so while my jet ran racetracks in the sky, I fired up some tools and started pulling apart the DSSAgent program. I discovered that the DSSAgent contained a copy of the developer's kit for the Pretty Good Privacy encryption system, that it contained the ability to send e-mail and post forms to Web pages and that its creators had gone to great lengths to hide the software's function. And there was no copyright message indicating who had written the program.

When I got home I did some more research and found that the DSSAgent program was running on every computer in my house. A quick search on the Web the next day revealed that Brøderbund is owned by Mattel Interactive, so I called up the company's public relations group and asked why its software had installed this program on my computer: Why was it there, and what did it do?

According to Debbie Galdin, a spokeswoman for Mattel Interactive, DSSAgent is part of a service that Mattel calls "Brodcast." Says Galdin: "Brodcast is designed to provide additional content for our more up-to-date products. The program does not send personal information to Mattel and does nothing to identify a particular user."

Maybe Mattel knows something about rapidly advancing phonics theories that I don't, but I can't imagine what kind of "up-to-date" content the company wants to rush out to all the 5-year-olds using "learn to read" software. Actually, the only sort of up-to-date information I'd bet Mattel is really interested in offering would come in the form of advertisements for its own just-released products.

Next Page: And isn't it against the law to collect personal data about kids?

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