RE: AOL fixing Microsoft default settings

["Terry Baranski" <tbaranski () mail com>]

> > How many other ISPs intend to follow AOL's practice and use their
> > connection support software to fix the defaults on their customer's
> > Windows computers?
>
>       Sounds good to me.  The potential for these users
> to be less-than-educated enough about the existance of
> this "feature" means that the potential for this to
> increase the overall network security is a good thing.
>
>       Hopefully they will enable automatic checking and
> downloading of critical software updates as well.

The "without notice" part is perhaps somewhat unsettling.  I can
appreciate that attempting to explain this type of change to the AOL
user base would be challenging, but I'd submit that third-party software
making OS changes like this without the user's knowledge could be "thin
ice" territory.  Where is the line drawn once this path is chosen?  

-Terry