The UK Sunday Times newspaper unleashed a neat little trojan that"ll upgrade you to Windows Media Player 9, complete with all those lovely facilities to protect "your" music...If you"re not careful, that is.
It consists of preview tracks from Elvis Costello"s When I was Cruel - Collector"s Edition, due out on Monday. There are some audio tracks, which are unprotected, a couple of unprotected WMAs and a couple of protected ones, which you"re only supposed to be allowed to play four times.
Open the files with WMP and you get the following message:
"The content you are accessing requires an additional level of security. In order to play it, you will need to update your Digital Rights Management Installation. Click learn more to find out how the Microsoft service protects your licenses, files, and your privacy."
When you click OK, Windows Media Player sends a unique identifier for your computer to a Microsoft service on the Internet.
So, you"ve got a free preview of a couple of tracks, and you can listen to them each four times so long as you just follow the instructions. If you do, then you"ll (most likely) end up with the beta of Microsoft"s latest DRM player, and you"ll also have your settings changed so that your installation facilitates DRM, WMA format and pay per play. But don"t worry, it didn"t cost you anything