SophosAutoUpdate connects to strange places

Question

Hi

I´m running Sophos Anti-Virus for Mac Home Edition on OS X Lion.

I recently installed Little Snitch to monitor my network traffic. Right after that I noticed that SophosAutoUpdate connects to really strange addresses. Network monitors connection history shows that SophosAutoUpdate has connected to b.scorecardresearch.com and o.aolcdn.com. These addresses seem to have something to do with internet tracking, scary.

Does anyone have an idea what´s going on?

Has anyone else noticed that SophosAutoUpdate connects to these places?

Should I be worried?

Thank you in advance.

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QC · Accepted Answer

Hello Dereck,

I'm not using Little Snitch, so I can't tell how it resolves the names. 
 Using the host command in a terminal window lets you resolve names to addresses and do reverse lookups (IP to name). So host es-web-4.sophos.com returns something like 
 es-web-4.sophos.com is an alias for es-web-4.sophos.com.edgesuite.net 
 es-web-4.sophos.com.edgesuite.net is an alias for xnnn . y .akamai.net 
 xnnn . y .akamai.net had address nnn.nnn.nnn.nnn

Usually you get two different addresses, they depend on your location. They idea is that you get a host "near" you for a vendor's service. Using host nnn.nnn.nnn.nnn normally gives you xnnn-nnn-nnn-nnn.deploy.akamaitechnologies.com though (and no hint which vendor/service uses this address).

Christian :1005539