Microsoft Says Free Windows 10 Upgrades For Pirates Will Be Unsupported

An anonymous reader writes with this story about some of the fine print to Microsoft's offer of Windows 10 upgrades to pirates. "When Microsoft confirmed it will offer free Windows 10 upgrades to pirates worldwide, many were shocked. VentureBeat has been trying to get more details from the company, which disclosed today that after PCs with pirated copies of Windows 7 and Windows 8.1 are upgraded to Windows 10, they will remain in a 'non-genuine' status and Microsoft will not support them. 'With Windows 10, although non-genuine PCs may be able to upgrade to Windows 10, the upgrade will not change the genuine state of the license,' a Microsoft spokesperson told VentureBeat. 'Non-genuine Windows is not published by Microsoft. It is not properly licensed or supported by Microsoft or a trusted partner. If a device was considered non-genuine or mislicensed prior to the upgrade, that device will continue to be considered non-genuine or mislicensed after the upgrade. According to industry experts, use of pirated software, including Non-genuine Windows, results in a higher risk of malware, fraud — identity theft, credit card theft, etc. — public exposure of your personal information, and a higher risk for poor performance or feature malfunctions.' Yet this doesn't provide enough answers. After a pirate upgrades to Windows 10 for free, does this 'non-genuine' version expire and become unusable after a certain period of time? Does no support mean no security updates for pirates?"

Comments

Re:This is pretty common.

[hairyfeet]

So you are bragging you are running Linux which has more vulnerabilities than Windows while being "forced" to run Windows for games? Aww poor baby!

Shellshock, Heartbleed, the assraping of Linux is just starting and its gonna get a HELL of a lot worse. While MSFT has had a big ass bullseye painted on them for years to drive them to increase their defenses Linux has been coasting on security by obscurity, well those days are over friend. Android is getting pounded by nasties and Linux is just getting beaten up as you can see and another Shellshock on the way there are even calls for a security audit in light of the constant pounding its gotten.

Frankly the FOSSie faction should be getting scared right about now, MSFT has been hardening their OS and getting their lessons in a war with the malware writers, now you have Low Rights Mode, ASLR and DEP, Secure Boot, Windows isn't the easy target anymore....Linux is. Between the coasting on security by obscurity, an OS made up of teeny tiny fiefdoms that don't collaborate or care, and oh yeah...a new spreading mess known as Systemd spreading tendrils in more and more critical systems while being run by a guy that blogs such "wisdom" as "can't get systemd running on ARM, shipping it anyway" the low hanging fruit? Its Linux and Android.

So get ready for it, because it looks like in less than 24 months you'll be posting "I HAVE to run Linux on one system for a program I need, the rest are running Windows". And when that day comes? You can thank Torvalds and all the other arrogant old guys that can't see beyond their own little gardens that have let Linux become a weak walled buggy mess.