Russell McMahon wrote:

>         http://www.goteamspeak.com/
> 
> It looks good*, BUT has it got wany of the nasty habits of Skype or is 
> it a good citizen?

It is closed-source, just as Skype, and the EULA doesn't state that it
won't take over your computer for its own evil sakes. It is a server, and
in order to work, you need to give it authorization to traverse all your
firewalls and routers. (It doesn't have to have the capability to do so,
you need to give it to it if it doesn't have it.) Since it is closed
source, you never will know what exactly it does. Since the user base is
much smaller than e.g. Skype's, you can't easily rely on bad things
becoming known quickly. Thus it seems to be what you call "a major
potential security risk". ("Potential security risk" is one of these
doublespeak type words. Designed to impress the reader without saying much
if anything at all. Something either is a relevant security risk or it
isn't. OTOH, pretty much everything is a "potential security risk".) Since
the EULA doesn't restrict anything, everything it does do is permitted by
you when you accepted the EULA and installed the program. Since it already
installs a server and you don't know exactly what else it installs, you may
elect not to run it, but this is no guarantee that you actually won't run
anything of it -- and since that part would be the hidden part, don't
expect it to tell you about it. There is little doubt that this software
was written by people who understand their crap and know how to write data
exchange software, so you know what to expect...

Gerhard

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