To those of you who believe that there is little security risk in this one particular software installation, I would say that you are probably correct. However, when (as most of us do) we install many programs that may connect to the internet, being probably correct is insufficient. It only takes one malicious program or even one thought to be (and designed to be) benign by its developers, but that opens a security hole (that neither you nor the developers are aware of) to cause real problems on a computer
agree, but didn't you know that the Harmony is web configurable before hand? it is obvious that it will need to connect to the internet. I guess it might have been possible (don't know) to do HTTP tunnelling on port 80, but in the end, what is more of a "security" risk, a program that uses the right port for the job and so needs that port open or one that tries to fake what it is doing?
If it would simply try to install the cookies (rather than simply say to change your security settings) you could give (or deny) permission for each cookie individually
it is not cookies, it needs the right ports open to be able to ul/dl info from the remote to the server.
He also agreed with me that it was not necessary for the software to run continuously in the background.
didn't I say that in my previous post :) (OK I don't work for Harmony) but like I said before, I think the Harmony monitor is there for people that use the TV guide, if you use it then you need to connect to the web site on a regular basis. The original Harmony
as you can see just had some simple transport buttons for VCR/DVD and for regular TV you just used the guide feature
the guide feature was practically required to be used with the 745, with the 768 it was optional (you could dial a channel because they added # keys), with the 6xx it was at first an add-on option and with the 5xx, 8xx it is not there any more. (it is amazing how this line has evolved over the years. So yes, for an 880 and 520 the monitor application makes no sense, for the 6xx and 7xx it makes more sense since someone could be connecting every few days just to update the guide (length of time depends on settings on the remote (number of channels, size of the rest of the config, max# days you stipulate)
