Why Does XP Auto-Connect to sa.windows.com?

termigator asks: "I have a private home network that has a Windows XP system on it (I know, the horrors, but it allows my wife to do some of her work at home). With recent discussions about DRM and the Microsoft EULA (which allows Microsoft to autodownload software), I decided to block all traffic on my Linux firewall from Microsoft systems (207.46.0.0/16) to the Windows XP box. This morning there was trapped traffic from Microsoft, after my wife was doing some work on the XP system the day before. I talked with my wife, and I could not determine what she could have done to cause the traffic to happen. Can anybody provide some insight?" Why can't Microsoft be up front about when it tries to phone home? Of course, phoning home isn't the big problem with most people, it's the fact that they try to be sneaky about it for certain tasks. With Microsoft pushing XP into the home, consumers should definitely be wary about storing private information on such systems until Microsoft provides some answers.

"Here is the logwatch summary:

Rejected packets from sa.windows.com (207.46.226.40).
  Port 1053     (tcp,eth0,output): 4 packet(s).
  Port 1054     (tcp,eth0,output): 4 packet(s).
Total of 8 packet(s).

Port 1053 is 'remote-as' and port 1054 is 'brvread'. I am guessing that the remote-as is related to the Remote Assistant feature in XP, but I've had no luck on finding any technical information about brvread via a Google search."