Media Player - Why does it Phone Home?

[Barryng]

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?

 

[su root]

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

 

[Disputant]

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.

 

[Daemonfly]

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.

 

[shadowdr]

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

 

[flyingember]

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

pffff.

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