Microsoft Talks Daily With Your Computer

An anonymous reader writes "Microsoft Corp. 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." The EULA is suppose to disclose this daily call-in feature. Lauren Weinstein, who is co-founder of People for Internet Responsibility, was one of the first people to notice the daily communications to Microsoft. Report from Yahoo.com"

Comments

Re:What kind of bullshit excuse is this?

[Anonymous Coward]

I haven't had it happen, but maybe this is what you're looking for?

Re:This happened to my moms computer yesterday

[oscartheduck]

Just be aware that there's a piece of malware going around that performs this function also. It looks like a microsoft box, comes up before you sign in and claims that your copy of windows is not genuine.

Re:Ethereal anyone?

[Crazyscottie]

Or better yet, you can just prevent those packets from ever reaching their destination.

The DOS command route -p add 207.46.0.0 mask 255.255.0.0 [192.168.0.254] (replace the address in brackets with a random address on your current subnet) will permanently route all would-be "phone home" packets to the random address that you specified.
 
... You could also, of course, use a firewall, but where's the fun in that? ;-)

Re:What kind of bullshit excuse is this?

[pro_virus]

My Sygate got the beast on the fly and there wasn't any registry key that started it... So I couldn't block it from starting at each boot. So I simply renamed the file and I have not any trouble since that :D

The file is in the system32 directory and the filename is : "WgaTray.exe". I simply renamed it :"WgaTray.bak" and it left my alone :D

Hope this help. Chow

Re:remote deauthorization

[Poltras]

Actually it can, quite easily... with administrative rights, it can cripple most of your registry and many drivers/dlls (even those unchecked by Windows) and then reboot the machine :) that would work quite efficiently.

The goal of many viruses is not to destroy stuff, but simple other goals such as:

• Make money over advertisement (adware).
• Botnets, in order to attain other goals (DoS, attacks, etc)
• Get passwords, credit cards number and other information which could be useful.
• Leave a message (think MSBLAST.exe kind). What better way to tell "I <3 you" than with the gift of a virus?

A destroyed installation of Windows does not serve much...

This is why you should have set it to:

[Atario]

"Notify me but don't automatically download or install them". (In Control Panel -> System -> Automatic Updates.)

Then you can pick and choose which updates you want, and when you decline one, it pops up a message in which you can check "Never ask me again".

Too late for those who trusted Microsoft, though...now you have to do a lot of registry tweaks and stuff.