About 10 minutes after I surfed the website www.SPIEGEL.de (and had since long left the website and closed my browser) a massive attack onto my firewall started. The originating IPs were 194.64.249.64 and 194.64.249.65. These machines belong to quality-channel.de (QC), a company responsible for delivering advertisements to internet users, and a 100% subsidiary of the SPIEGELGruppe. Within five minutes the two machines tried to connect to my computer at least 126 times! Asked why this has been, Rudolf Gross of QC, the man responsible for those two machines, told me: "Ich habe Ihr Logfile gelesen und habe die starke Vermutung, dass es sich hierbei um einen Effekt bei der Auslieferung von Werbemitteln über einen Loadbalancer handelt. [...] Möglicherweise haben Sie eine Seite geöffnet gehabt, welche vom Quality Channel mit Werbemitteln beliefert wird? Das wären unter anderem beispielsweise Spiegel, Heise oder die Süddeutsche Zeitung?" Can anyone of you tell me why their machines should connect to mine? The machines tried to connect to the upper ports of my machine, mainly with 5digit port numbers, but anyway: After asking why connecting to my machine was necessary, my questions were punished with silence. And I don't believe him.