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Intuit Sued Over Product Activation
An anonymous reader writes "PCWorld is reporting: [Scott] Leviant's firm of Stanbury & Fishelman has filed a class-action lawsuit against Intuit in Los Angeles Superior Court on behalf of all U.S. purchasers of TurboTax software for the 2002 tax year. The suit alleges that Intuit engaged in unfair and deceptive business practices by failing to fully disclose the mechanisms and consequences of its product-activation technology before consumers pay for the software."
It's not that product activation is bad all of the time, it's just that the implementation really sucks on occasion.
;-)
I have no problem with paying for good, reliable, quality software for my home machine, but if you use tricks or traps to sucker people into paying more than they should, that's just not right.
SOFTWARE MAKERS: Don't cry foul about piracy and then turn around and be just as dishonest with consumers.
Well, I guess this is a reason to go back to pirating my games
Background: 28/M/Bi-Sexual; Owner of a Linux company; MBA Harvard 2003; B.S. Comp Sci MIT 2000
It's true. I should know, it happened to me.
I thought it was something that _I_ personally did wrong until I started searching Google trying to find out what I did wrong before installing the software. Did I mess up permissions some where? Did I forget to "su root" before running the scripts? Where was the error?
Well, then I found a blog that said "Likely the biggest problem users have expressed, is the level at which the TurboTax licensing agreement is managed and protected with the SafeCast/C-Dilla technology. People believe C-Dilla infiltrates their system in a very insidious manner, and uses memory and resources even when TurboTax is not loaded. And some believe it has caused them serious compatibility problems with non-related CD writing operations. (PC Magazine and ExtremeTech will be conducting some tests next week to see if we can duplicate some of these problems).
Intuit and Macrovision have provided only cursory information regarding C-Dilla operations. Understandably, Intuit does not want to expose significant details. But if the scheme is mathematically and technically sound, there really is no reason why ALL the details should not be known, as it would likely not be computationally feasible to crack in a reasonable timeframe, even if one is armed with full knowledge of how it works. Unless Intuit and Macrovision provide this level of information, many people will still not trust you."
Background: 28/M/Bi-Sexual; Owner of a Linux company; MBA Harvard 2003; B.S. Comp Sci MIT 2000
Or is this just a baseless rumour? I haven't found any concrete proof supporting this claim.
Partition, I doubt it. But if you're using grub and it has a stage 1.5 loader stored right after the MBR, I could see how it might get corrupted by C-Dilla...
I'll do anything to get back at those pricks for writing to my boot sector...including the enrichment of lawyers.
---- "Logoff! That cookie shit makes me nervous!" - A. Soprano
Dunno about you but my car comes with a Product Activation Key.
Of course, this key is for me to protect MY property, and not Ford'ss, but remember software ownership is upside-down: it's YOUR computer but THEIR software and they have to make sure YOU stay out of it unless you have permission.
Nahhh Its more like the greedy intuit gets punished for not being honest, by even more greedy lawyers.
I have to say this is one of the few times I have heard what could be called good news about the legal system. If you doubt this is so, just imagine how people who have unusual partition tables feel about C-dilla.
Crash
OK, so suppose Intuit gets slapped down. Still doesn't stop other weasels from writing in the boot track. Does this tool exist:
:-)
1. before install, make a backup of the boot track and checksum it.
2. after install, checksum the boot track, and display diffs, if any.
3. optional restore of the boot track.
This allows us to get our old boot tracks back, and *still* get the fun of starting a righteous flame-war on SlashDot.
Sorry if the answer to this is "yes, you clueless fool, go use tool __". But at least I'll get educated
TurboTax has the Windows(tm) logo flag. So, I take it they pass the "Designed for Windows" logo criteria.
How in heaven's name could anything that writes the boot track earn the Windows logo? This cranky old software validation manager smells either cluelessness (MSFT) or cheating (Intuit) or some combination of the above.
hehe no doubt. I actually switched from money to quicken for just that reason a few years back. Just last week I bought money again. I've had to call MS to reactivate Windows when I built a new computer. Pretty painless, the person I spoke with was really easy going. I didn't feel like they though I was trying to just get a second system going. I'm hearing quite a different tale from people dealing with Intuit and reactivation though.
With that covering why you have to register a vehicle, let me now explain why the manufactures haven't fought this particular bit of legislation. The manufactures like the law because it gives them an excuse to keep a close eye on rebates for sales. A common method of fraud by vehicle dealers is to sell a vehicle on a certain date, but not to register it with the manufacture for a date sometimes months afterwords. Since dealers know they will get rebates for each vehicle sold during a certain time period, they simply hold off on the registration until the rebate period comes up. The dealer than gets the factory to dealer rebates and the factory to customer rebates. If the customer even knows enough to ask they are simply told they are getting a little longer period on the warranty for "free". I worked on this computer systems for this, so I can assure that this kind of fraud is quite substantial.
Hint, if you've ever been asked not to date a vehicle sales purchase agreement, the dealer intends on collecting an additional refund, and quite possibly "your" refund. This is when they don't simply white out your agreement date and write in their own date. We busted one dealer for sending in some 60 to 70 of these in one month, all with obviously the same handwriting! (Think typical rebate of 2-3 grand).
Unless you live in the ST:TNG universe, you can't replicate your car so that more than one person can drive it at a time.
Even if you did live in the ST:TNG universe, trying this would probably create a temporal distortion, merge you with a Vulcan, and kill your cat.
-prator
...the bastards get ya coming and going, don't they?
Pay for superfluous Windows licenses, or pay more for the privilege of using your pre-existing licenses. What a great choice!
~Philly
No, sir. I am not a Canadian. I AM AN AMERICAN, AND DAMN PROUD OF IT.
I'll get to the point in a second, but first, I want to dog the United States Immigration and Naturalization Service. If you work for that fucked up piece of beaucracy, listen up... You probably don't realize this, but your actions FUCK UP PEOPLE'S LIVES. The way a government beaucracy works is kind of like a complicated piece of software from Microsoft (except that Microsoft's software is actually better than the operation of a government beaucracy, and believe me, I have no respect for Microsoft or anything they do). A beaucracy is able to (albeit very inefficiently) handle a specified number of "states." There might be 10 or 100 or 10,000 of these states. For example, say you have a file with this yellow form in it, that green form, and some purple form. That would place you in a very specific state, and the beaucracy "knows" how to proceed in processing your "case" from this point forward. Now if you approach the beaucracy with something that does not conform exactly to one of the states that they handle, you will be stuck because nobody in the beaucracy has the authority to do anything about you. It's like falling through the cracks of a conveyor belt and landing in some shit pile where you'll stay forever because nobody ever cleans it up. Did you recently hear about a bunch of people getting busted over destroying INS documents because they wanted to eliminate the so-called backlog? Yeah. I live in the United States since before I was two years old. I am twenty four now. Over fifteen years ago, my immigration process got stuck somehow in an unhandled "state" like I described above. Papers from my file were lost by the INS, and as a result, no matter where I turned, nobody could or would help me. Maybe those documents were shredded. Maybe they fell behind someone's desk and got thrown away by a janitor who gets paid $30.00 an hour. It doesn't matter how it happened. What matters is that regardless of what I tried, I was told that this is already being handled by the INS (which I knew for a fact that it wasn't), and if I got a penny for every time I was told, "Don't call us, we'll call you," Bill Gates would be my personal servant. The INS literally fucked up my life. I could not get a social security number, or a driver license, or a bank account, or a job, or go to a university... I could not cash a check written to my name. If I had been so inclined, I would not even be able to prove my age to buy a pack of cigarettes. This went on for twelve years. If I was to count the hours I spent waiting in LONG lines with millions of Mexicans, being the only gringo in the entire building who could ACTUALLY speak this country's official language, only to be turned away by the idiot INS clerk who could not and would not even attempt to help me, I probably wasted a year of my life in man-hours standing in those God-damned lines.
Some might be inclined to tell me, "If life is so bad for you here, go back to your country!" What those people don't understand is that AMERICA IS MY COUNTRY! I know no other country. I have never set foot on foreign land, save for my almost two years as an infant when I lived elsewhere. The United States is the one and only country I know, and there is no way in the world that I would break because of a stupid agency and move to some foreign land where I don't even know the language. Being probably the most honest American around, I even contemplated breaking the law and seeking quality false IDs--the ones that can't be told apart from the real thing because they're made from the real thing, stolen from the agencies that make them. Sure, those can cost thousands of dollars, but did I mention the THOUSANDS of dollars that had to be paid TO THE INS as FINES for THEIR negligence?!? That's right. The INS would fuck up and I would have to pay a fine for it.
In case you're interested, I was lucky enough, after having fallen into a deep depression and having suffered at the hands of the INS for YEARS, to fall into the hands of one officer who took it upon himself to reconstruct the missing documents and get my life on the right track. This process took a year, which is light-speed compared to what happened before.
We Americans, of which I am a member, should be FUCKING ASHAMED at the shit our government pulls off. (The previous statement does not include the current war, but definitely includes the so-called War On Drugs, which is a waste of time and money. You want to fry your brain? Fine... The government should legalize ALL drugs, sell 55-gallon drums of the stuff to ANYONE who is so inclined, for the price of the drum plus delivery. The drugs inside are free and of supremely high quality. This will immediately destroy the entire market for illegal drugs. Did I mention they should tax the stuff?)
Now to get on-topic. I purchased this piece of GARBAGE from Intuit, not knowing that it contained this shit, and I refuse to damage my computer and/or tell software makers that this practice is ok by installing it. I definitely want to join the aforementioned class action lawsuit.
A large percentage of the masters students in the CS department where I'm at are from India. Many of them are very bright, but they don't really know much about computers, for many of them, computer time was limited and they didn't get much real screen time until they were well into the program. This is in distinct contrast to USians who have grown up with computers and often have an innate understanding of the -feel- of computing.
While many of the Indians have a great grasp of the more theoretical aspects, they lack the 'street smarts' of how to actually -use- a computer.
my sig's at the bottom of the page.
via email and the postal service. email was to their public affairs flacks (the only non "support" address I found on their site at: public_relations@intuit.com), snail mail to:
r m=1&DocID=836
Tom Allanson
Senior Vice President
Consumer Tax Group, Intuit Inc.
2632 Marine Way
Mountain View, CA 94043
6 weeks and counting, and no response on the snail mail side. I did get an email response from a member of the Turbo Tax "Executive Response Team" (myra_support@intuit.com). This obvious boilerplate reminded me what a good idea --and how utterly benign-- the product activation was. I used to spend 3 days doing taxes....software has reduced that to about an hour. But it won't be done with TT any more.
Their response is followed by my letter. I hereby place them both in the public domain:-)
From Intuit:
My name is Myra and I am a member of the Executive Response Team for TurboTax. I am sorry to learn that you have some concerns about our products and want to thank you for taking time to contact us directly about it. Hearing directly from customers like you is the best way for us to know exactly what you're experiencing so we can work together to get you correct information and the best solution. I'd also like to apologize for the delay in responding to you.
After reading your message, please let me share some quick facts with you that I believe will give you the information you need.
TurboTax 2002 includes a product activation process that ensures TurboTax is used in accordance with the TurboTax software license and services agreement.
Product activation ties printing and filing from the TurboTax federal product to a single computer, preventing unlicensed use of the product.
Privacy was a key consideration when implementing the Product Activation technology in TurboTax. Product activation is completely anonymous -- no personal information is transmitted to Intuit. We would never violate your trust or privacy by installing any type of third party software such as spyware.
Product activation transfers nothing but a Product Key and Request Code. The Key and Code key are matched together and a confirmation is sent from Intuit that activates TurboTax on your computer.
Product activation does not monitor any activities on your computer nor will it prevent you from using your CD-R or CD-RW drives.
The functionality that manages the TurboTax product activation (Macrovision SafeCast(r)) can be deleted from your computer when you are done using TurboTax. The uninstall utility is available on our support site at http://www.turbotaxsupport.com/default.asp?platfo
Once again, we are sorry we caused you concern. Your opinion matters to us and we will improve the process for next year taking your input into account. Thank you for your comments. If there is anything I can do to keep you as a TurboTax customer, please let me know. I hope this helps. If I can address any additional concerns please e-mail me at Myra_Support@intuit.com, or you can visit our website at www.turbotaxsupport.com.
Best regards,
Myra
Executive Response Team
Intuit, Inc.
Myra_Support@intuit.com
My letter:
I have been a satisfied user of Intuit's TurboTax for ten years, and purchased a deluxe version with downloadable state tax packages directly from Intuit annually since 1997. Regrettably, unless Intuit revisits its approach towards the honesty of its customers next year, the 2002 version may represent my final purchase of TurboTax.
. The product activation requirement and limitation to use of the 2002 TurboTax product on a single PC makes an unpleasant statement about Intuit's perception of the typical behaviors of its customers, and is unrealistic as more homes move to a networked, multiple PC computing environment. In the last year, my home network grew to three computers sharing two printers on a wireless LAN. It is quite simply unacceptable that I am limited to using TurboTax at just one of these machines. As a 20-year information technology professional, I am sensitive to --and share-- your legitimate concerns over intellectual property and related digital rights. Moreover, as a multi-year repeat customer, I am offended by Intuit's negative assumptions about my honesty.
Equally disturbing was the fact that TurboTax --unknown to me at the time of installation-- placed the hidden "C-Dilla"folder and its associated "SafeCast"file on my PC. I have read Intuit's FAQ on these files, and it's not yet clear to me exactly how "SafeCast"serves me as an honest consumer in any way. I am appalled that I was not notified or given any options about this code during installation.
I am sure you are aware that H&R Block's "Tax Cut"is not only priced below TurboTax, has no activation requirement, and is sold under an family license explicitly permitting installation on multiple computers. As my family prepares now for the 2003 tax season, I hope you'll appreciate why TurboTax has lost much of its appeal in our household. My plans for any future purchases of TurboTax hinge directly on how Intuit intends to approach its customers in 2003. I look forward to hearing from your on your plans for next year's version of TurboTax.
--dang hell YA! You GOT it. Sad to see HONEST LEGAL immigrants getting the complete BS from our drone bloatedcrats while the illegals are rewarded daily.
I wish you well, I am glad you finally got it straightened out. Hang tough!
Tell ya a story from my girlfriend. She gets a divorce before I met her, but never changed her name back, so one day she goes to do it. Buncha calls later she's down at the SSN office trying to get a new card, she got STACKS of ID, proof of this, proof of that, bills, insurance papers, the whole regular american deal, including our state DL of course. We are the only two anglos in the room. About two dozen or so hispanics. I saw the "ID" these guys were using to get SSN's, didn't even have a picture on it! Just printed up pieces of paper with some weird stamp on it, and they were going through the line fast as the clerks could handle it. One of them was the translator, it was like he had a tour group almost. I mean, we are sitting right there watching this go down.
Comes my girlfriends turn in line, NOPE, not enough "proof" to get it that day, had to go get some more. We are both steamed and incredulous, but what can ya do. So, before we leave, I asked the lady "WHAT is up with handing out all the cards to these guys? Can't you see you are being scammed?" I'm paraphrasing but I asked her that. So, she leans over to me across the counter, older white lady, whispers "we got ordered to do it that way, we don't like it either". No lie, she told me that.
That was in an office in norcross georgia, a burb northeast of atlanta, about 4.5 years ago.
I call BS.
The golden age of copy prevention remains the mid-to-late 1980s. I remember very well the fact that the best selling program in 1987 for PCs was "Copy II PC" which was a software unprotect program. Wanna scare a person who was a Commodore 64 owner? Make "Kachunk! Kachunk!" noises at them. Why is that scary? Because there was a copy prevention scheme that caused the heads in a C64 floppy drive to bang around violently. Remember media with deliberately introduced physical flaws? Remember questions like "what is the word which is on page 1, line 5, word 17 of your software manual?" and you would have to answer them before you could get into your software?
No, there was a reason why aggressive copy prevention died out around the end of the '80s. People didn't want it, and embraced alternative software without the copy prevention.
It might take a while, but they'll learn their lesson. But wait for another 15 years or so, and someone will try it again. Such seems to be the cyclical nature of software companies and "piracy" paranoia.
Oh yeah, another blast from the past for those other old farts who remember it: "Home Taping Is Killing Music!" "C30, C60, C90, Go!" Ha ha ha ha...
Knowledge is power. Knowledge shared is power multiplied.
> implementation really sucks on occasion
Yeah, if they want to be so draconian about it why not just put one hardware dongle in the box? Sadly, I know why, because trashing your hard drive is much cheaper than a 20 cent bit of plastic and an 80 cent chip.
Hopefully this class action will change the economics around a bit. It should be more expensive to ruin my system than to include a hardware dongle.
I had a hellish time with Intuit last week whilst trying to install TTax Biz; just for laughs here's a transcript of my chat with support...
.txf extension and copy it on the computer on
:) I'd like to thank you for
You have been connected to H. Earnie.
H. Earnie: Hello Fred, how may I help you today?
emptor: I mistakenly installed TTax Biz on the wrong computer and need to
deal with the DRM activation to install it on the right computer
H. Earnie: Which TurboTax program are you using?
emptor: As I said, TTax Biz, for windows
H. Earnie: Okay.
H. Earnie: Fred, please let me know have you activate it on that computer?
emptor: It is currently activated on my desktop. I need to activate it on
my laptop, as that's where my quickbooks application is. I didn't read the
install dialogs closley enough.
emptor: Oh, I have also uninstalled it from my desktop
H. Earnie: Please give me a moment to research the issue.
H. Earnie: I would liek to inform you that from the Year 2002 the turbotax
software cannot be installed and activated in more than one PC from the same cd.
This is a decsion taken by our higher management to prevent piracy and use of
multiple users from the same pack of software. The Turbotax 2002 software
restricts the number of e-filing to five from the same pack of cd. However, you
can do a basic installation in as many pc's as you wish to. The basic
installation will allow you to do your taxes but won't allow you to print or
efile. If you want to efile then you will have to copy the tax file from the
system with the basic installation and then open it in the system in which the
product has been activated which will allow you to do a e-filing.
emptor: But your web site says that I can:"If you purchase a new computer
or hard disk, Intuit technical support agents can assist you in reinstalling and
reactivating TurboTax at no additional cost"
H. Earnie: Fred, this is the case when your old computer and hard drive is not
working.
emptor: The real issue is that the safecast DRM is seriously impeding my
ability to use your product. I have been a Intuit customer for 8 years.
H. Earnie: Okay.
emptor: Further, just because I made a mistake by installing it on the
wrong computer shouldn't mean that I have to buy a new copy just to use your
software. If you can't resolve this issue then I'll need to speak to your
supervisor.
H. Earnie: Please give me a moment to research the issue.
H. Earnie: Fred, this is the Intuit Policy for turbotax 2002.
emptor: What's the policy? That I spend $100 for software that won't let
me install it on the correct computer?
emptor: I think it's time for me to speak to your supervisor.
H. Earnie: Okay I am connecting you to the supervisor.
H. Earnie: Please wait a minute.
H. Earnie: I apologize for that inconvenience to you.
H. Damien has entered the session.
emptor: Damien, are you up to speed with my problem?
H. Damien: Hi, I'm H.Damien . While I'm reviewing your case, please tell me
briefly what additional information or help I can provide to resolve your issue.
H. Earnie has left the session.
emptor: OK, all I need to do is re-activate this 'ware on my laptop. I've
uninstalled it from my desktop. I need it on my laptop b/c that's where
quickbooks is, and I can't import the data unless they're both on the same
machine. I discovered this *after* I had installed it on the wrong machine. your
website says that tech reps can help me reactivate it. I didn't wqant it on my
laptop because I didn't want the Macrovision safeCast munging my laptop but it
looks like I don't have a choice.
emptor: So, 1 of 2 things will happen here: 1. you help me activate it on
my laptop or 2. I return the software, get my $100 back, completely swear off
Intuit products (of which I've been buying for 8 years), and tell everyone I
know, on and offline to avoid Intuit like the plague.
H. Damien: I understand your concern and apologize for the inconvenience.
emptor: I'd also really like a phone number to talk to someone about this
H. Damien: Fred, you can still import the Quicken file in your TurboTax program.
Just save the Quicken file with
which you installed TurboTax and import.
H. Damien: If you only need to prepare a return on a second machine you do not
need to reactivate. TurboTax can be installed in Trial mode and used to edit
your tax return. All you have to do is maintain the tax return file from machine
to machine. Please remeber you cannot print, e-file, or save to PDF in this
version.
emptor: But it's already uninstalled on that computer. I've been mucking
with this for 1.5 hours now and am getting quitre a bit frustrated. I can't
understand why you can't help me reactivate TTax. your web site says you can.
Also, this is TTax Business; which requires that the quickbooks file be open to
import. Again, quickbooks must be OPEN, the only way that can happen is if
they're both on the same machine
emptor: So no, I can't just "import" as you suggest. If you can't help me
then I'll need to speak to YOUR supervisor.
H. Damien: Then in this case I would request you to install Quickbooks on your
machine on which you have activated the TurboTax program.
H. Damien: Intuit respects and protects customer information. We integrate
privacy into everything we do. That is why privacy and security were key
considerations when implementing the product activation technology in federal
TurboTax for Windows desktop products for Tax Year 2002.
emptor: OK, we're getting nowhere here. I need to speak to someone on the
phone. I can't be willy-nilly re-installing your software (which will take
serious time on my part) just because your DRM copy control is impeding my
ability to use the software. So again, I don't understand why you can't help me.
H. Damien: I understand Fred, how frustating this can be.
emptor: I refuse to alter my software installs just to accomodate your
DRM 'ware.
emptor: And if you understood how frustrating this is you'd be helping me
to reactivate the software.
H. Damien: May I have your product key.
emptor: Key is:95949-5216-19249-1274
H. Damien: Could you please let me know you purchased the product directly from
Intuit or bought it from a retail store?
emptor: I bought it retail from Office Depot
H. Damien: Could you please let me know when you activated the product?
emptor: Earlier this afternoon, I guess about 5 p.m.
H. Damien: Fred, kindly note down your new product key:
H. Damien: xxxxx-xxxx-xxxxx-xxxx
H. Damien: Please use this product key during installation and activate the
product.
H. Damien: Is there anything else I can help you with?
emptor: Nope, unless that key doesn't work
helping me to resolve this problem!
H. Damien: You are welcome.
H. Damien: I would like to take this opportunity to thank you for visiting our
TurboTax Support Chat.