Media Player - Why does it Phone Home?

Why does Windows Media Player insist on accessing the internet when all I want it to do is play media local to my hard drive?

I use Mediaplayer 6.4 kuz I don't like it doing that.

It does things like that because:
-Codecs.. if it doesn't have the codec, it'll try to find it.
-WMA and WMV files may require authentication before you can view them, because they can be limited to a certain machine, or time limit or number of views/listens.
-you probably havn't read the EULA, so you don't know what kind of things it can tell microsoft about you and what you do with media player

It has to access the internet for the internet radio feature and who knows what else is lurking in there.

I have my firewall set up to block anything outgoing on that specific program, I like the player, but I don't trust them.

It will connect and try to find album info, etc... for any audio file you play with it. WHo knows what other tracking it does. I have it blocked.

it looks for codec's it considers illeagal and uninstalls them.its in the eula.

shadowdr said:

it looks for codec's it considers illeagal and uninstalls them.its in the eula.

Click to expand...

pffff.

go into preferences and disable everything you feel pertient. I believe there's some you'll find useful.