Zeitzeuge said:
Good Day,
they told me, that by default windows Vista automatically looks for
jpeg-images on connected external hard- and DVD/CD-drives and creates
thumbnails from them in the local user directories in a data base called
thumbs.db
Is this true?
If yes, could we seriously discuss in here the consequences of this sort
of action?
May be my question was unclear. So I put it into another shape:
When a user logs in on Windows Vista, he has his private directories for personal data. This directory is usually on the drive where the system resides. Some of its sub-directories may be hidden.
Now, if the computer is on for a current user and an external device is plugged in or a CD/DVD is put into the DVD/CD-ROM-drive, they told me that without clicking any directory in the external media windows vista starts reading out images from there, creates thumbnails and dumps them in that very local user-directory in a central file called thumbs.db.
Is that true??
I could verify that thumbnail data on an available vista system had a size of approximately 60 MB (much stuff) which can rapidly be sent to the internet by third party software if there is a high-speed connection.
If this is true no matter what computer can potentially be used to collect miniatures from image data on external devices and send it elsewhere for a rough analysis. The thumbs.db on windows XP was still saved locally on the external harddrive if possible.
However, the XP-thumb.db had an open format. Almost every program was able (as it seems) to read out the thumbnails.
This may be a problem if the external drive and the computer belong to different persons. For example if thumbnails are created from classified or official data belonging to government officials etc.
Is here anyone who can exactly tell me when and for how long thumbnail data is collected from external devices?
I know that it is always risky plugging in an external device because there may be a collector. .. (for those who would like me to dump my computer because something MAY go wrong....). But in this situation my personal feeling is: Digital photoes usually provide EXIF-data with thumbnails which can rapidly be read out - at least if it is not CD/DVD. So there is absolutely no need just for the operating system of collecting private data and sending it to another device only because a user _might_ later click a folder.
On the other hand I inserted a DVD with personal photoes which directly started a tremendous traffic with the effect, that my own photo viewer was blocked from creating its own thumbnails. Means: Since vista did something quite vaste and expensive, a program I really intended to act upon the drive was pushed outside until Vista was finally ready.
I am aware of the fact that there is some place where automatic thumbnail extraction can be deactivated. However when connecting my media to a foreign computer, I am not in the position to achieve this goal without making a bad impression. If an important person - on the other hand - even doesn't know about this risk just from the OS, the host computer may suddenly provide a hundred of thumbnails from classified or private data... So what a bad impression his colleague may produce to automatic or interactive thumbnail analyzers if he suddenly has thumbnails from images on his computer he is not at all supposed to have????
So again: What's the truth about this thumbnail extractor?
