Is Akamai too Trusted ?

[G_girl 0]

Akamai is constantly transferring data when I am idle. I don't think we can trust every person who uses akamai for their content.  I think an "ask" setting needs to be put on their connections, right now it seems they have carte blanche to connect.

 

 

Blocking them then unblocking them each time is tedious, would it be too difficult to have a setting for ask on them ?

 

 

[INeedAMedic 1]

I have some couple questions, what is Akamai? Is it a malicious software? And what wrong to trust it? 

[Fabian Wosar 390]

Akamai is constantly transferring data when I am idle. I don't think we can trust every person who uses akamai for their content.  I think an "ask" setting needs to be put on their connections, right now it seems they have carte blanche to connect.

Microsoft uses Akamai. Since we do trust the Microsoft infrastructure, we ultimately trust the Akamai infrastructure as well. Keep in mind though that the trusted status of Akamai related domains has no influence outside of banking mode. An application wanting to connect to Akamai isn't automatically allowed or anything.

[Fabian Wosar 390]

I have some couple questions, what is Akamai?

It's a popular content delivery network. It's not malicious or anything.

[G_girl 0]

Microsoft isn't the only business that uses Akamai though, alot of people use Akamai.

 

http://www.akamai.com/html/customers/customer_list.html

 

When I'm not loading anything, I don't want data being transferred over the internet by something I don't know, without permission.

 

I have manual updates for Windows, and error reporting off. The only time I really want to connect to MS is when it's checking the clock or the network connection icon, it shouldn't be doing DNS lookups or anything when I'm idle, should it ? I don't know if its a keepalive function or ?

[Fabian Wosar 390]

Microsoft isn't the only business that uses Akamai though, alot of people use Akamai.

I never said they were. Just that Microsoft is one of their customers and since a lot of the Microsoft infrastructure is hosted by them Online Armor ends up trusting their domain names.

 

When I'm not loading anything, I don't want data being transferred over the internet by something I don't know, without permission.

Again, the trust status of domains has nothing to do with the ability of any program to connect to trusted domains. If an application is allowed to connect to the internet, it will be able to access them. If it isn't, it won't.

 

I have manual updates for Windows, and error reporting off. The only time I really want to connect to MS is when it's checking the clock or the network connection icon, it shouldn't be doing DNS lookups or anything when I'm idle, should it ? I don't know if its a keepalive function or ?

Depends on the application making the connection. WER for example will connect every time an application crashes. Browsing the internet may pull in Bing Ads as an advertisement and tracking network which belongs to Microsoft. There are dozens of reasons why applications on your system may connect to servers belonging to Microsoft. That being said, what I said above still stands: Even if those domains show up in the Domains list as trusted, it does not mean any application can access those domains without you having to give them permission to access the internet first.