The Windows Updater is supposed to patch your system against critical flaws and exploits. To make things easier for normal users, there’s an “Express Install” button where you don’t have to review each update one at a time and can just trust Microsoft to install only the most security critical patches.
Enter the
Windows Genuine Advantage notification tool. It tool doesn’t protect you or do anything at all to help your system, it collects data about your computer and declares your copy of Windows legal or not. In millions of cases, it wrongly identifies systems as being “pirated” and nags users repeatedly about having an illegal copy and how to contact Microsoft for a legitimate one. Even worse, it locks you out of further security updates until you do.
To make sure that you don’t miss WGA, they slipped it into IE7, Windows Defender, and Windows Media Player 11. But the worst of all was issuing it as a “critical update” on Windows updater. This way, anyone who clicked the “Express Install” button would get it by default without knowing better.
It’s because of practices like this that geeks don’t like Microsoft. They slipped a tool onto your machine that spies on your system and disables functionality. Sounds like a virus to me.
So why am I posting such old news now? First, I haven’t talked about this before and it really ticks me off. Second, the WGA made
PC World’s 20 all time most annoying tech products (at number 9).
Tags:
Microsoft,
Public Confidence
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