Windows Media Player Sends Cookies for Audio CDs?

CleverNickName asks: "I have adsubtract installed, on my Windows 2000 system, and filter out all cookies and advertisements, except for sites like Slashdot. When my Windows Media Player starts up a CD, it tries to set a cookie, and I hear adsubtract 'gulp' it. So why does WMP need to set a cookie about my CDs? Does it send this information to the Borg? I've read the included documentation, and searched on Microsoft's website, without finding an acceptable answer. Maybe a fellow reader can help unravel the mystery?" I could not get my Windows 98 box to reproduce this behavior. I didn't see anything in the C:\Windows\Cookies that would indicate that WMP was sending anything, nor did I see the machine emitting any unusual network traffic. If anyone else has noticed this behavior, please let us know.

Not location, locale

[Smack]

Which is followed by "en%2Dus", which is the standard locale for US English. Just a standard part of internationalization.

Re:Not location, locale

[XoXus]

In HTTP, only certain characters are allowed. For everything else, you need to hex-escape them.

In this instance, 2D is hex for '/'.

Thus %2D is '/', and en%2Dus == "en/us", or American English.

Dave.

Reply to Cliff

[sharkey]

Since I am not at work, I can't confirm this now on my PC there. I'm out sick for who knows how long. I do have an observation for Cliff. The poster stated that he is using Windows 2000, and Cliff is using Win9x. Perhaps it only sets the cookie on Win2000 PCs. Anybody with a beta of Whistler that can check it out?

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Re:Not location, locale

[sharkey]

That's different than their servers, at least SMS. SMS codes "US" as 00000405, IIRC.

What does the "2D" stand for, do you know? Now that you pointed it out, I understand the "en" and the "us".

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Re:Not location, locale

[sharkey]

Ahhh. Thanks. I was wondering if it might be the time zone, since we are GMT -5 but we don't change our clocks.

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The Cookie Contents

[sharkey]

Back to the rock pile...
Here is the contents of the cookie it set on my PC (Win2000 SP1, Media Player 7.00.00.1954:

LocaleInfo %7C%7C%7C%7Cen%2Dus windowsmedia.com/ 0 3172904448 29774887 2413349536 29407559 * MC1 V=2&GUID=2AE3D4AE6AAC47569458766F42438213 windowsmedia.com/ 0 3049388032 29592233 2413649536 29407559 *

This is all on one line. The following is the cookie broken out into its separate fields.

LocaleInfo
%7C%7C%7C%7Cen%2Dus
windowsmedia.com/
0
3172904448
29774887
2413349536
29407559
*
MC1
V=2&GUID=2AE3D4AE6AAC47569458766F42438213
windowsmedia.com/
0
3049388032
29592233
2413649536
29407559
*

The first half seems to deal with location. Could it be my location? Might it be part of a region check for DVD?

The rest is pretty Greek to me. Maybe someone with experience reading MS cookies might have an idea. It doesn't appear to refer to CDDB at all, to my untrained eye.

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The client doesn't _originate_ cookies...

[His name cannot be s]

The client application is given the cookie from the server application (in this case, what the MS server?, CDDB? I dunno )

When the client application gets a cookie it stores it until it connects to the server application again, when the server says, "hey gotta cookie?". Now, Media Player uses HTTP to communicate, and the server sends a cookie back.

Hell, the number of servers which generate cookies just for the hell of it are huge!

Really, if you are going to use MS software, you are going to have to get used to the fact that they want information from you.

Why are you using WMP instead of (insert favorite Free Software CD player here)?

That way, if there was a reason for the cookie, you could look at the source!


G

could be...

[toast0]

that whatever method it uses to get data about the cd (probably using some part of ie) gets a cookie from the server it uses, maybe a scare unique id, or maybe just a session id that some servers like to send with every request.

the first thing i do w/ an audio cd is rip it to mp3, so i wouldn't know what windows media player does on my computer when i play a cd, the spiny noises of the cd-rom drive when its playing audio annoy me to no end, i'm used to the spiny noises of hard drives though :)

as for win xp making winamp not run as other posters have mentioned, i really doubt that would happen for a few reasons:

1. people would be upset
2. nullsoft would be upset
3. nullsoft is an aol time warner company
4. aol time warner is not somebody microsoft would want upset with them

also it seems to me that if win xp did make winamp not run, the people at nullsoft would figure out a loophole fairly quickly, they seem to be pretty bright people

Re:On another note.....

[toast0]

hmmm your mac address magically became a byte longer than everybody elses

how do you get that to happen

Re:Windows Media player

[kbyrd]

"Firstly, use WinAMP for playing CD's" or XMMS [xmms.org]

For something a bit different, try Sonique [sonique.com]. It's pretty but a processor hog.

Re: Not location, locale

[XTaran]

> > en%2Dus
> What does the "2D" stand for, do you know?

To me "%2D" looks like URL-encoding of "-" (because 2D(hex) is 45(dec), which is the ASCII code for "-"), so the locale just is "en-us" like you know it from a lot of other places.

Re:Windows Media player

[barneyfoo]

Microsoft is breaking compatability with Winamp win WinXP. So maybe on some other windows os. Or better yet, dont use windows. But I know many of you are addicted to p01nt and c1ick.

CDDB?

[cheeserd00d]

wild guess but could it be to retrieve the CDDB information on the album? that would seem to make the most sense

Possible causes

[bluescreen]

Assuming you are using version 7, eg the first 'cool' one with skins and all.. It could be one of the following things that WMP does:

WMP checks for new fixes/updates, via HTTP, so it likely uses a cookie to keep state of your last version check

By default, it starts with the "media guide" if you run the program itself, which is just a web page, and since you can customize it, it uses cookies

People have already mentioned CDDB like functionatlity

Aside from that WMP does comply with some content protection and license management for online content. In these cases it allows unique identification of you (your player). This is where your MAC address is used. This seems fair to me if you use licensed content.

Of course, you can turn this ID as well as protected content in options

On another note.....

[Crewd]

Check out your registry and you will notice that Microsoft has deemed it necessary to use the MAC address of your NIC to help identify you...check out the following key :

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\MediaPlayer \P layer\Settings\Client ID

Crewd

Re:WMP

[ImaLamer]

he works for microsoft.

Re:Possible causes

[ImaLamer]

This is the skinny too: to use some themes you need to turn on that weird setting that says other programs can read your database. That alone sounds fishy to me!

Also it always checks the site for an update and try to load windowsmedia.com in the "Media Guide" ('ms portal to yet another thing) which we all know will and would track you down. It's a website with sponsered content - they want to know what you watch.

Also for you cookie/history whores who love to delete this stuff. Your library (all those mp3s and DivX movies you have on your hard drive) well it's stored in a file like this "wmplibrary_v_0_12.db" . I like to delete it every now and then because how can I be sure windows wouldn't like to see that. Yes most often every file you play gets stored there until you delete it. Well not the file, but the filename, so "simpsons_S4_E11_hax.mpg" could maybe get you in some trouble.

Also note that windows media player is like msn explorer (girlfriends and linux don't mix) it'll trick you into turning certain things on just to 'get it to work'.

Windows Media player

[Nargon]

Firstly, use WinAMP for playing CD's Secondly, Media player searches for the TRACKNAMES and ARTIST DETAILS, I'm pretty sure this can be turned off in preferences....