Microsoft Sued by a Beijing Student Over 'Privacy Violation'

freakxx writes "Xinhua report that a Beijing University student has sued Microsoft for allegedly gathering personal information via Windows Genuine Advantage. He has demanded a compensation of 1,350 RMB (around US$ 180) and an open apology printed in a national newspaper. The student has accused Microsoft of using WGA to gather information about his computer and himself, rather than solely checking whether or not the installed Windows XP system was genuine. A Microsoft spokesman has declined to speak on this issue and said that the matter is under investigation."

Comments

Tin Foil Hat #132

[Tablizer]

I'd rather Microsoft have my personal info than the government. Any government.

You are assuming they are mutually exclusive...

Can not mix person and non-personal info ...

[AHumbleOpinion]

The notion that they collect "no personal information" is very clever, but untrue. Microsoft can easily associate your pc with a record in their backend because each pc generates a unique signature.

I have some experience in this area. According to our attorneys, but being informally paraphrased by myself, it was important to never mix personally identifiable information (PII) and non-personal information. Any mixing or linking would cause the non-personal to become PII and therefore under the jurisdiction of US and international legislation, with more legislation on the way given the new found importance of this topic. So to make life simple, I may collect the operating system version for demographic reasons but I can not record an account name, IP number, or other PII with that information, nor could I have some common key to associate records in PII and non-personal databases.

Re:Outsource. This is not really funny.

[darkmeridian]

I would be careful about relying on the testimony of technicians. The United States was lulled into the first Gulf War partially on the testimony of a woman saying Iraqi troops were breaking into Kuwaiti hospitals and stomping infants in incubators to death. It later turned out the woman was a member of the Kuwaiti royal family, and made the whole thing up as part of a systematic Kuwaiti campaign to get America to attack their invaders.

That's not to say the charges against China are without basis. I'm just advocating some skepticism about people who may have a grudge against China, or have a good reason to lie about torture back home (so they can get asylum and citizenship here in the United States).

Re:solidarity begins at home.

[tftp]

And if the police are doing anything, they're protecting him from the more sensible people who would like to smack him around.

Keep dreaming ...

Re:He has already lost.

[Bloodoflethe]

The EULA doesn't claim personal data as their property. In fact, they go to great lengths in their documentation to say that they are not collecting personal information!