Microsoft acknowledged Wednesday that it needs to better inform users that its tool for determining whether a computer is running a pirated copy of Windows also quietly checks in daily with the software maker. The company said the undisclosed daily check is a safety measure designed to allow the tool, called Windows Genuine Advantage, to quickly shut down in case of a malfunction.
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Member since:2005-07-08
Leave it to MS to come up with a more proactive way of finding bugs in their software. First, software developers managed most of their debugging internally. Then, as software became more complex, configurations more diverse, and applications more business-critical, most vendors started accepting bug reports from customers. In the PC era, MS and others created systems that can automatically detect a malfunction and help guide users through an automated bug reporting system.
But now, MS is trying to take the process full-circle and once again remove the user from the feedback loop. And what better way than to periodically poll the installed software and ask, "does everything seem OK over there?"
Now that this issue is out in the public (and apparently no one is filing any lawsuits), there's only one thing left to do... develop an email trojan that installs a daemon that listens for these checkup requests and reports massive numbers of failures back to the poor server on the other end in Redmond, disabling WGA and causing yet another PR nightmare. Any takers?
Member since:
2005-10-02
Yeah, sure.
A software routine does not need to contact MS-servers on daily basis in order to shut down in case of a malfunction.
I consider this spyware. (And my Windows installation is legal btw. And unused since the downgrade to XP).
Rule #1: No software routine should ever call a remote procedure without explicit consent (every time).