But John, I have always had little balloons pop up from the system tray to tell me when updates were ready for my computer, so I must have had my firewall configured to allow whatever communication was necessary for that to happen.

What I don't understand is the need for a tool which has only one purpose, to continue communicating with Microsoft weeks after that purpose has been fulfilled.

I have always trusted Microsoft, in fact for three weeks I have been mindlessly clicking 'Yes' to allow the tool access to the internet, until this morning it suddenly occured to me to wonder what it could possibly be saying after all this time.