Since I registered my unit online, this point is moot, but it would have been nice to have a disclaimer at start up or for the unit to try a couple of times and then give up, unlike what this unit does which is continue to try over and over to register with Geobytes.

Hopefully this will be removed in teh next version.

Re: Firewall taking hits from WDTV Live

12 hours ago – last edited 12 hours ago

I’ve got an answer for you guys. Geobytes.com is being used to check the country you’re in for the device registration process. This registration is optional – if you don’t register, the country information is not used for anything. Sorry it took so long to figure this out.

It’s not OK however for Arizona to have a law that let’s local police do the same, and this was decided by a Federal judge?

We are doomed as a nation!

All seemed well until this past weekend when I checked out my firewall and found that this nifty little box was sending out packets and slamming my firewall every 3 seconds trying to find a way out of my private network and on to the WWW to send whatever information it’s been programmed to send to a site named GeoBytes which is a data collection warehouse that does IP targeted advertising.

The concern that I have with this is that this is obviously privacy, I wasn’t aware that my WD Live was talking out to a site, I don’t know what information that site is collecting about me and had it not been for my firewall showing the persistent (every 3 seconds) attempts, port by port, trying to find a way out, I would have never known it.

GeoBytes is a marketing firm, but to market you need to know what I’m interested in, so this box on my network could in theory be sending out a message that I’m in Phoenix and I’m watching a copy of Little Mermaid and selling this information to another site and the next time that I log on to say Facebook (another privacy issue laden site) I may see a banner ad that says “Disney Movies on Sale for $ 5 dollars at the WalMart 2 miles from your home”. I can almost deal with that but what I can’t deal with is what other information the box may be sending out and to who!

The box could very easily be sending out information that I have 100 movie titles on my media center and sell that list to the MPAA (Motion Picture Association of America) or that I have 500 MP3’s and sell that list to the RIAA who then want to see if all my movies and songs are legal.

This is a privacy issue and until I get a really good answer from Western Digital as to why their box is doing this, my firewall will remain blocked and I am now seriously considering taking these units back to Best Buy for a full refund!

From my Firewall

UPDATE: APS is kind of funny, they don’t post my full bill to my account for several days after they read the meters but they post the amount due on the bill when I log in to my account. Now for the big reveal, did my solar power system meet or exceed my expectations??? Drum roll please …  my June bill is …  $18.07!!!

The breakdown was pretty much as expected, I used a lot more power from APS compared to last month, almost a thousand more kilowatt hours, my production was a bit lower, off by 560 kilowatt hours. The reality is that I didn’t generate any less power than the previous month, I just needed more from the grid.

The great thing about the APS kilowatt hour credits is that I went into last month with 3032 kilowatt hour credits on my APS account, to get my bill to zero + taxes they dipped into my reserve to the tune of about 740 kilowatt hours so going into next months billing I have a total of 2292 kilowatt hours on account to make up for the fact that summer is here and I’m using a bit more power. Based on my spreadsheet I should have enough credits on account to maintain the 17-18 dollar a month bill till the end of summer! My July bill is now posted on the Solar page.

My motto for the month… “Aside from causing skin cancer, the sun is our friend!”