Silence on the Wire

The Unexpected Bits: Personal Data All Around

Yet another reason we should not be thrilled by the prospect of a hostile party peeking at our network (regardless of whether we believe the data they can see is sensitive) is that plenty of software violates the principle of least astonishment. The principle of least astonishment is a fundamental rule of software design that basically says that a program should respond to the user in ways that surprise them least—in a consistent, intuitive, predictable, or otherwise expected manner. As it turns out, many programs from several software publishers send an amazing amount of valuable information, far beyond what we might expect, often putting users in a situation they did not bargain for. As always, Microsoft ...