"Opinion: Who wouldn't trust a company that hid built-in spyware on
every Windows-based PC in the land?
It turns out that Microsoft's Genuine Advantage anti-piracy program is
also keeping daily tabs on Windows users. Who knew?
Well, until a few days ago, nobody outside of Microsoft headquarters in
Redmond, Wash., knew.
According to an Associated Press report, David Lazar, director of the
WGA (Windows Genuine Advantage) program, Microsoft was doing this as
"kind of a safety switch."
A safety switch?
Because, Microsoft told 'top Microsoft reporter in the known-world' Mary
Jo Foley that "if Notifications went amok on Microsoft's side, Microsoft
wanted a way to terminate the program quickly.""
"OK, let me be straight for a minute. There's no proof whatsoever that
Microsoft is actually doing anything to anyone else's software or
tracking information on their users.
Well, except when you try to update a WGA program that's running on
Wine, an open-source implementation of the Windows API (applications
program interface) that runs on x86 Linux and Unix OSes like Solaris and
FreeBSD. Those users won't be able to get patches. Let's leave that
aside for now.
Here's the point. For over a year, Microsoft has planted a program on
every modern Windows-powered PC that reported home every day. They don't
have an intelligent reason, never mind a good one, for this move. And,
they never told anyone that they were doing this."
<http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1895,1974911,00.asp>
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