Microsoft Misrepresenting WGA's Functionality?

Legal Ethics writes "According to an article on Groklaw, Microsoft is misrepresenting what the Windows Genuine Advantage (WGA) tool is to pressure people into installing it. It comes with no uninstall, it fails to disclose many pieces of information it provides to Microsoft, and it misrepresents itself as a 'critical update' when it does not address any security vulnerability, although it remains to be seen if it can create one. ZDNet has a series of screenshots so that you can see exactly how badly it misrepresents itself. Oh, and it also checks for updates, so Microsoft can presumably execute arbitrary code on any machine with it installed, merely by making that code part of a WGA update."

Comments

Re:Why punish monopolies?

[sorak]

If true, does that mean that the DOJ erred in calling Microsoft a "monopoly"?

Nope. Linux is far from having all the functionality of Windows. Sure, if you use it for work, or for school, then you can find programs that can do most things, but you will not find Quake 4 or World of Warcraft on Linux. Gimp is no paintshop killer, and WINE is nowhere near as robust as a real Windows system

Now I want to see one thing done.

[Vo0k]

Hijack the address of the WGA server.
Make a spoof/fake WGA server run under the hijacked address.
Remotely take over all the systems that connect.

Brick a billion of computers in one night.

While the Police of the whole world would be on your neck, it would be worth seeing Microsoft getting out of this.