Thank you for the clarification, Randall!
Fred mentioned the firewall issue. I have actually zone alarm installed and
disallowed -permanently- the Microsoft software (with the exception as the
usual suspects, DNS, etc.) to contact outside. Now I am not so sure anymore
that I got hacked by anyone else but Bill. My system started to behave
erratically when I had outlook and other ms programs running:
The cpu was around 2-3% busy -never more during those phases- but everything
stalled. (Including the task manager). I start to believe that those progs
called home and waited for response from ms until they timed out which is
why my system froze for about 30-60 seconds, execute a few time slices and
then went into wait-state again. I have office xp installed...
Is there any info out how the snoop works?