Not chicken little and not in need of medication. I don't use my real name
in any newsgroups to avoid having my email overrun & spammed etc..

A firewall such as ZoneAlarm will in fact block the keyboards internet
access.
Zone alarm was how I detected the keyboards attempts to access the net in
the first place.

After contacting HP I was told (excerpt from their response): "I can assure
you that we are not gathering any more information from you than other
websites do when you visit them.  I am sure you understand this about
cookies so I will not elaborate."

Cookies are browser controlled and as such have no real access to the actual
machine thus no way of gathering system information. And cookies can be
disabled. The keyboard driver is a system diver and as such has complete
access to all information on the system.

As I said zone alarm can block the access but I don't believe we should we
be forced to block something that shouldn't be there in the first place.

To the person mentioning the Microsoft keyboard - Thanks - I had considered
replacing the HP one with a MS one - now I know that doesn't solve the
problem.