Microsoft WGA Phones Home Even When Told No

Aviran writes "When you start WGA setup and get to the license agreement page but decided NOT to install the highly controversial WGA component and cancel the installation, the setup program will send information stored in your registry and the fact that you choose not to install WGA back to Microsoft's servers."

Comments

the route your kids take to school, of course

[swschrad]

probably all the apps information. naysayer, meet the Business Software Association, also known down around the docks as "the muscle."

can't RTFA because they're slashdotted already.

Re:the route your kids take to school, of course

[lazlo]

So, how hard might it be to generate random but valid data to fill out this XML? And then have a little daemon that does nothing but post it over and over 24/7? "Wow. Looks like a NAT/proxy server with millions of users behind it who really don't like WGA."

Petty, I know, but fun.

This is good

[Devir]

While many think this is bad and invasion of privacy, think of it as this:

when we normally click "I DONT Agree" the software does nothing. But if it sends the message back home with statistics of how many dont agree, it tells the software company some people dont agree.

We can argue EULA's till our fingers are raw and bloody, but it doesnt matter if the company in question doesnt read the conversations.

In short, by clicking the Dont agree button and having it sent home to MS we're telling them we dont want that crap on our machines. Maybe (deity willing) MS will start to listen. More companies may adopt that approach and we'll get less and less one sided (retarded) EULA's.

anyone Remember Borland's |"like a book" EULA? Great stuff.

Re:This is good

[Lumpy]

So let's have fun.

anyone got a way to dissect it completely so we can write a little app to send maybe 20-30 fake entries a day? now spread that across 100-300 people and microsoft thinks that there is a mass rejection of WGA starting to brew.

on a related note

[jjeffries]

This is kinda old, but some years ago my neighbor got a new Win ME (!!!) machine, and I helped him put in a NIC and put it on our little neighborhood network. I was curious if it was going to phone home, so I had a sniffer running on my router...

The damn thing picked/guessed a valid (NATted) IP address, netmask, and gateway without using DHCP (arp tricks?), and sent a load of mystery packets to an address in a Microsoft IP block. Only then did the computer do the "new device detected" routine, but could not find a driver for the NIC and I had to go fetch one on another machine.

W T F ?

Unfortunately I have since lost the pcap dump.

Moderation: -1, no proof

Re:time to modify the hosts file

[rainman_bc]

and find that RealPlayer and Adobe Reader also phone home

All the old Macromedia studio products also phone home too...

That means Adobe Dreamweaver etc...

Re:So?

[Anonymous Coward]

You chose to install the Windows Update ActiveX control, didn't you? And you clicked "I agree" when it told you it could send this info to Microsoft, didn't you?

Why yes, I did. And yes, I did agree.

So now, explain what that has to do with me telling WGA to not install, and not agreeing to allow it to send this information, and it sending it anyway. You are aware that contracts do have limits and only apply to the particular transaction, right? If I buy two cars from a dealership and agree to pay $300/mo for one and $200/mo for the other, the dealership cannot bill me $600/mo while claiming that my agreement to pay $300/mo covers both cars, as you seem to claim that my agreement to allow WU to send information to microsoft overrides my disagreement for WGA to do the same.