Microsoft braces for user backlash over downloads

The Journal Gazette (Ft. Wayne) | Toronto Globe and Mail ^ | 8/01/05 | Simon Avery

[LibWhacker]

The next time you visit the Web site of Microsoft Corp. to download some software, be prepared to let the world’s biggest software company have a look inside your computer.

In a determined strike to quell the proliferation of counterfeit software, Microsoft is now requiring that all customers coming to its Web site for upgrades and other downloads submit their computers to an electronic frisking.

If you use one of the estimated 100 million PCs running pirated software, don’t expect your upgrade. For Microsoft, the new policy is a stepped-up effort to combat the loss of billions of dollars’ worth of software sales every year to counterfeiters around the world. But in ramping up efforts to fight piracy, the Redmond, Wash.-based behemoth already finds itself fending off critics over privacy.

“It sets an extremely negative precedent,” Pam Dixon, executive director of World Privacy Forum, a non-profit public-interest research center in San Diego, said of the company’s initiative. “Microsoft is saying, ‘Before I let you do anything at all, you have to open your computer to us.’ I really object to this.”

The company will scan machines for a variety of information, including product keys or software authorization codes, operating-system version and details on the flow of data between the operating system and other hardware, such as printers.

It is access to this information that particularly upsets the privacy advocates. Dixon says the only information Microsoft needs to fight piracy is the product key and the operating-system version, and she says that Microsoft will be able to identify users uniquely based on some of the information the company collects.

“They are grabbing more information than they need to deter piracy,” she said.

If Microsoft deems a PC to be carrying contraband code, it won’t allow a user to download Microsoft programs, with the exception of security patches. But the software company – which says that more than one in five U.S. computers runs a counterfeit version of its Windows product – is not just waving a stick. It is also offering a big carrot.

Microsoft said it will give a free copy of its Windows XP to customers who unknowingly bought a counterfeit version of the operating system and who fill out a piracy report, provide proof of purchase and send Microsoft the counterfeit CDs.

Customers who cannot provide proof of purchase but file a piracy report will receive a substantial discount on a legitimate version of the operating system, said Tim Prime, a product manager in the Windows client group at Microsoft Canada Co., a subsidiary of the U.S. company.

Executives at Microsoft reject any suggestions that the move will antagonize customers with privacy concerns.

“Customers want to know whether retailers have sold them genuine software,” Prime said.

More than 40 million users agreed to have their systems scanned in a 10-month trial that began last September in several countries. The participation rate amounted to 58 percent of all visitors to the pilot Web site, far exceeding Microsoft’s expectations of just 10 percent, Prime said.

Microsoft said no personal data will be collected during the validation process, and information will remain completely anonymous. The company said it commissioned TUV-IT, an independent German security auditor, to test how well its Windows Genuine Advantage program protects customers’ data. The firm concluded that Microsoft does not collect any personal information that would allow it to identify or contact a user.

Seth Schoen, a staff technologist at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a civil liberties group in San Francisco specializing in technology issues, agreed that Microsoft would not be able to identify customers personally through the program. But the data collected are unique to every customer, just as human fingerprints are unique, and the issue becomes how long the company holds onto the details and whether they could become personally identifying later on, he said.

Technology companies have walked a fine line for years on the issue of collecting information from consumers’ computers. Six years ago, RealNetworks Inc., whose software plays audio and video content on the Internet, released a patch for its RealJukebox program after the public learned the software was relaying personal information about users to the company.

More recently, Google Inc. created a privacy backlash when it said its free e-mail service, Gmail, would include special software that inserts ads into personal e-mails based on their content.

Clearly, Microsoft believes any risk of public-privacy concerns are worth incurring to fight a problem that has turned into an epidemic in some parts of the world.

Microsoft has been fighting counterfeit efforts for years with limited success. It says that 35 percent of the world’s computers run counterfeit software and that piracy cost the global software industry $33.7 billion in 2004.

[Eddie01]

Two Words: Open Source

[tcostell]

In a related story, the company is giving away free copies of it's Microsoft office suite of desktop tools and all it's asking from their customers is that they sign over THEIR IMMORTAL SOUL!!!

[AntiGuv]

So far as the thread topic at hand, I just don't see what's the big deal about Microsoft verifying the legitimacy of software that they update. If someone doesn't want Microsoft validating their Windows, then don't update! Piracy is illegal and its wrong - and I don't see why I should have to subsidize all the software thieves when I buy mine.. How else are they supposed to verify without looking?

As for your primitive computer system, I was very resistant to upgrading from 98SE myself, but I'm very happy that I did! I still haven't migrated the greater part of my old setup over here to XP, but if nothing else it's given me a real good idea of what I actually use and what I had just wasting space on my harddrive..

When I upgraded last time though I just connected the two systems together, created a partition, and put my entire old system onto my new system. Then, whenever I wanted something I'd move it over. Eventually I realized I didn't need anything that was left of the old stuff so I removed it and that was that. You can also just connect the two machines by USB and use one of those migration software packs.

[FraudFactor.com]

This smells like "Big Software Brother" to me. There is no way to know what amount of snooping, privacy violation, and uploading private information to Microsoft is going on.

Also, it may open up new exploits for hackers to take advantage of.

Plus, it sets another bad precedent, just as Software Activation did ... I already got burned financially on software activation with a software company that went out of business.

[Maurice Tift]

That is why I migrated to linux...

I'm using the downloaded version of Mandriva Linux right now and it's amazing. It has Firefox, a couple of nice HTML editors, OpenOffice, a good FTP client, a useful FTP server, and a client for terminal services that is somehow more reliable than the one packaged with WinXP. The screen savers are the sort of thing a scientist would like. Linux also reminds me of the computers that I used at college, so I feel at home with it. I'm also amazed at how popular I have become after becoming a Linux user - Every day, I feel like some kind of really wild rock star.

[Uncle Vlad]

I see Microsoft isn't satisfied anymore with just screwing up your life with their unreliable software.

[LibLieSlayer]

Wait until you see the Draconian security of the new Windows Vista. I have a friend running beta, and it has security verification on every boot-up. No copying of CD's, DVD copy software refuses to load etc.

I may just go to a Mac! BTW, I have been using MS since Dos first came out (first box was an XT 4 MHz). I am fluent in all versions of Windows, even some of the "Server" editions. If they lose me, they lose along-time supporter and core customer...

LLS

[Dudesdad]

Microsoft? Sounds like a sexual innuendo.
I have migrated to Slackware Linux and run Win98se as and application under the KDE desktop.
I never ever use Windows update.
I don't feel like a wild rock star, I just feel free.
Did I do something wrong?

[squirt-gun]

They way to do this is to have two hard drives with the windows system on drive A and everything else on drive B.

Then just disconnect drive B during the "interrogation"and downloading on drive A.

End of worry about Microsoft spying.

[squirt-gun]

Pls see 30

[stocksthatgoup]

Best protest is to switch to another Browser. It is this gateway that represents Microsoft's achilles heel.

[kevkrom]

I never, never use their auto hardware drivers, prefer to get them from the mfg.

Amen to that. My laptop's DVD/CD drive kept locking up the computer on a random basis -- it was using the driver provided by Windows Update. I went to Toshiba's site and found a more recent driver, and my problems are solved.

The big thing is that Windows Update will apparently only push drivers that have gone through "XP Compatibility Testing" or some such thing -- manufacturers aren't going to re-certify drivers for every little update, so you wind up with out-of-date drivers via Windows Update.

[Maurice Tift]

I don't feel like a wild rock star

I'm just operating in infomercial mode... ;>

[Maurice Tift]

It's much more important to feel free! Yes!

[Tennessee_Bob]

Gee - you could probably do something like that with a 200+ gig hard drive sitting in an external case on USB.... ;)

[upchuck]

Tnis latest inititative by Micro$oft has already been hacked: http://www.boingboing.net/2005/07/28/microsoft_genuine_ad.html

[cyborg]

antichrist ping

[Dick Vomer]

how do you disable "automatic updates"?

[chilepepper]

like the chicago song, its... only the beginning.

i have been predicting microsoft using the net to check one's computer for some time to my friends.

as for me, i *NEVER* download anything from microsoft, if i can avoid it even by walking on hot coals. this strategy has avoided me pain for at least ten years. can you say Windows XP SP2?

way back in Windows 95 days i downloaded a new version of windows media player for Windows 95 once and guess what: it broke my MICROSOFT brand joystick. i assumed that microsoft would show some pride in its own hardware by making sure it worked. nope.

of course, they had a *newer* version of the joystick which did work with the new media player. okay, lesson learned. it was *extremely* difficult to back the changes out of the media player, but i was able to do it.

the idea of course, was that Microsoft purposely, subtly sabotaged any Windows 95 installation so people would be forced to upgrade to Windows 98. watch for this same tactic to begin soon: Windows XP will somehow seem slower and slower, and the frustrated sheep will believe that longhorn will solve all their woes... poor sheep. all they get is sheered.