A: LameXP does not connect to any web-server, except for the "automatic updates" feature. Of course, in order to check for new updates, LameXP unavoidably has to communicate with our update servers. However, in no event LameXP will search for updates without your consent. Also, LameXP will not send any personal information to the update server. Instead of uploading your information, e.g. your current program version, to the web-server, LameXP will download the update information from the update server and compare it to your installed version locally. Furthermore, all information and program files downloaded from the update servers are protected by PGP (GnuPG) signatures, in order to assure the authenticity and integrity of these files. Files with missing/invalid signature are going to be rejected, so (spoofing) attacks are prevented.
+Note: Before LameXP actually tries to download information from our update servers, it will check your internet connection first. Only checking whether the update server is reachable does not suffice here. In case that the update server does not respond, this could mean that our servers are currently experiencing problems, but it could also mean that your Internet connections is failing. In order to distinguish these cases, LameXP will validate the Internet connection prior to connecting to the update server. For this purpose, LameXP contains a rather long list of "known" hosts, taken mostly from Alexa's Top 500 list. In order to validate the Internet connection, LameXP will pick a random host from the list and check whether that host can be reached. This process will be repeated, until a certain minimum number of "known" hosts have been reached successfully.
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