[ale] Totally OT

[Irv Mullins]

On Wed, 27 Oct 1999, J. Reeves Hall wrote:

> > Now, I'm not paranoid or anything, but just what info gets sent out, and who
> > do you suppose gets that info? Hmmm? Bet someone on this list knows.
> 
> Perhaps it's just checking whether the cache has expired.
> 
I thought about that, but 
(a) my cache has a large number of entries, it would take a long 
time to do a DNS lookup and check to see if there were changes to any of the sites.
The transfer in question doesn't take very long. 
(b) I have not yet seen any kind of "couldn't find xyz" or "site is down" message at that 
point - so if it _is_ checking for availability, with a ping, for example, IE doesn't bother 
to share that knowlege with the user.

Regards,
Irv - who is sure there is some completely harmless, warm, fuzzy explanation for this activity.