Microsoft's Revamped WGA Puts Burden On Users

By macstorm
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macstorm

Posted
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Analyst: Microsoft's Revamped WGA Puts Burden On Users

Microsoft announced Tuesday that it would use Automatic Updates to roll out changes to the component of its anti-piracy scheme that nags users when their copy of Windows is tagged as counterfeit. An analyst criticizes the changes as more work for customers.

Among the modifications to what Microsoft calls the WGA Notifications Tool for Windows XP are a revamped installation wizard that's designed to provide users with more information on validation results and a new category, called "indeterminate," that sits between the black-or-white of "genuine" and "nongenuine." In addition, Microsoft said that it would give Windows XP customers new tools to "troubleshoot the problem and learn more about the results" when the anti-counterfeit software can't make up its mind whether the copy of Windows is legitimate or not.

The developer's Windows Genuine Advantage program has been regularly knocked by users and analysts since Microsoft debuted the notifications component in April. Notifications Tool, an addition to the already-in-use component that decides if Windows is valid or bogus, nags users of pirated copies with on-screen messages, balloons, and banners. In June, Microsoft took considerable heat when it was revealed that WGA "phoned home" to Microsoft's servers on a daily basis. Similar technologies and practices unveiled for Windows Vista also have been blasted as onerous.

"In addition to delivering the latest anti-piracy capabilities, this update incorporates customer feedback to improve the user installation and validation experience," a Microsoft spokesperson said Tuesday in an e-mail.

According to Microsoft, the update will be delivered via Automatic Updates. The company also has come under fire for pushing its anti-piracy software using this mechanism, which is usually reserved for security updates. This approach has been labeled spyware and is the subject of a class-action lawsuit. Only users with copies of Windows XP validated with four "known compromised product keys" will be served the update via Automatic Updates, however.

Microsoft also pledged to update the Notifications Tool every three or four months, "as part of a commitment to continually evaluate and adapt to changes in software piracy," said the spokesperson.

Michael Cherry, an analyst for Directions on Microsoft, criticizes the newest changes. "I'm getting more and more bothered by the burden they're putting on the customer," he says. "All the benefit goes to Microsoft. There's nothing to make it a quid pro quo. If they had tackled everything about licensing, given us a way to inventory licenses, and simplified the text so we knew what the licensing meant and enforced licensing, that would be one thing. But that would have been hard."

Instead, says Cherry, Microsoft shoves more of its anti-counterfeit measures onto customers' shoulders, without giving them anything meaningful in return. The move by the company to hand users validation troubleshooting resources and tools is only the latest example.

Cherry suspects that the tools are a way for Microsoft to avoid some of the technical support calls that result when users are told their copy of Windows XP is bogus. "There are only so many people support can handle," says Cherry, who also points out that the calls are by nature long and involved. "Customers are annoyed and mad when they call. A call must take at least 15 to 20 minutes, a lot of that just to calm the person down."

Worse, says Cherry, is that users will now be steered toward self-help tools when piracy problems crop up. "I shouldn't have to be sent off on a whole day adventure to troubleshoot validation for Microsoft," he says.

Microsoft did not immediately respond to questions about the changes to WGA; its offices in Washington state were closed Tuesday because of snow and ice in the Seattle area.

Users who want to update their Notifications Tool manually can download the newest version from the Microsoft Download.

Source: CRN

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*John*

Posted
Posted

Microsoft is doing exactly what any company would do, try by all means to protect its products from being stolen. I have never had any problems with WGA.

Really? Then that obviously means that no-one possibly could, and that Microsoft is fully justified in dumping on their paying customers in an attempt to stop piracy, that is in no way harming it....

:rolleyes:

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pacifica

Posted
Posted

no thank you mr. gates!

that's a bunch of bullarky. i purchased a Dell desktop about a year ago with MCE2005 and earlier this week i rebooted my machine and i got a warning that my copy of Winders was non-genuine. talked about p****d off! i rolled it back to a previous system restore, disabled automatic updates and blocked WGA via the software firewall. now i'll wait to see if it occurs again over the next two weeks if it does i'm gonna c***k it.

i'm also a participant of the perpetual beta for onecare meaning, theoretically i'll never have to pay for it since i'm always a beta tester. the only problem is that onecare seems to favor the microsoft programs so i'm not sure if i can trust it to continue blocking WGA. we'll see.

Veteran

thagame

Posted
Posted

Microsoft is doing exactly what any company would do, try by all means to protect its products from being stolen. I have never had any problems with WGA.

I used to have issues with wga and complain about how its annoying and intrusive. but then i bought windows and those problems went away lol

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*John*

Posted
Posted

I whole-hartedly agree.

When a company is not being harmed by piracy, its ridiculous that it would dump on its paying customers to try and stop it.

Microsoft is not being hurt by piracy. It continues to make billions hand over fist, fund all of its projects, and make massive profits. And thats WITH the easily pirated Windows XP in existance.

This is nothing but greed, and they dont care if they are hurting paying customers in the process.

Grand Master

L3thal Veteran

Posted
  • Veteran
Posted

When a company is not being harmed by piracy, its ridiculous that it would dump on its paying customers to try and stop it.

Microsoft is not being hurt by piracy. It continues to make billions hand over fist, fund all of its projects, and make massive profits. And thats WITH the easily pirated Windows XP in existance.

This is nothing but greed, and they dont care if they are hurting paying customers in the process.

Oh come on with your "dumping on paying customers" talk. Lets be serious for a minute here. First off, if you legally own Windows, Microsoft will allow you to download their vast array of products for free as an advantage of being a paying customer, e.g Windows Defender. Tell me, out of the millions of PC's running XP, how many false positives actually exist in percentages? I'd guess less than 5% and that's being generous.

Lets stop this anti-WGA bandwagon. If you were the one working at Microsoft 40 hours a week programming Office or Windows, you wouldn't like people stealing what you worked hard on.

:no:

Grand Master

L3thal Veteran

Posted
  • Veteran
Posted

Would you rather it pop up and tell you what is going on or just have it tell you that you failed validation?

What are you talking about? If it gives you a popup then obviously your copy may be illegitimate. Would you like them to give you a paragraph explaining what's going on with pretty colors and icons? :rolleyes:

Grand Master

Scirwode

Posted
Posted

Me neither. Also, I don't use pirated versions of Windows.

That includes me. I've original Windows since 2002 and have had no problems whatsoever with WGA. The only problem is that I have to call Microsoft to activate my copy which is every 3 months after a reformat.

Scirwode

Enthusiast

Busman401

Posted
Posted

Well I am having aproblem with WGA and maybe someone here has a pointer to try:

On two machines we have legit vlk keys from my business and one of the machines is throwing a fit about how this is a not a genuine version of windows. I went to the microsoft piracy site and tested the machine that was reporting this problem and guess what? The website reported the product key as valid. So why the nags? Anybody have an answer for that?

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redeemed

Posted
Posted

Microsoft is doing exactly what any company would do, try by all means to protect its products from being stolen. I have never had any problems with WGA.

Oh come on with your "dumping on paying customers" talk. Lets be serious for a minute here. First off, if you legally own Windows, Microsoft will allow you to download their vast array of products for free as an advantage of being a paying customer, e.g Windows Defender. Tell me, out of the millions of PC's running XP, how many false positives actually exist in percentages? I'd guess less than 5% and that's being generous.

Lets stop this anti-WGA bandwagon. If you were the one working at Microsoft 40 hours a week programming Office or Windows, you wouldn't like people stealing what you worked hard on.

:no:

Me neither. Also, I don't use pirated versions of Windows.

Ditto all of the above! :)

Veteran

ambiance

Posted
Posted

Wahmbulance? I have never had a problem with WGA at all and every time this topic comes up the whiners come out. The fact is beggars can't be choosers so if you pirated it then you aren't entitled to have an opinion on the matter. If you get a false positive a simple phone call will ratify the problem.

Grand Master

Aaron Veteran

Posted
  • Veteran
Posted

Oh come on with your "dumping on paying customers" talk. Lets be serious for a minute here. First off, if you legally own Windows, Microsoft will allow you to download their vast array of products for free as an advantage of being a paying customer, e.g Windows Defender. Tell me, out of the millions of PC's running XP, how many false positives actually exist in percentages? I'd guess less than 5% and that's being generous.

Lets stop this anti-WGA bandwagon. If you were the one working at Microsoft 40 hours a week programming Office or Windows, you wouldn't like people stealing what you worked hard on.

:no:

Well, my work desktop has a VLK that is legit and has been blacklisted. My desktop failed the WGA and I now have a little icon in my systray to remind me of that. We also use redirects so our data is synced no matter what system we log into, which is pretty nice. I can log into an machine and have my My Documents folder populated. Oh, except that now my work laptop, which we bought with an installed copy of XP Pro only 4 months ago - now fails validation as well. Seems that the redirect pushed that little bit of info as well. So I am actually 2 for 2 at work now for false positives.

Grand Master

ozgeek

Posted
Posted

People who bash the WGA remember:

MS have the right to install any software that helps prevent copyright infringement. It's all in the EULA. So that class lawsuit won't work. The judge will simply throw the Windows EULA at whoever started the suit.

Hence I would do the same if I spent years working on a good operating system only to have it stolen and put out on bittorrent with cracks.

Piracy DOES hurt Microsoft. Remember MS is a huge company and money goes to the department of whichever the money was used to buy for, so if you bought Windows, money would go to the Windows department. Yes, therefore it's MS's but it's used for that department. So if you keep pirating, Windows department won't have enough to keep it going thus the end of Windows would loom.

Grand Master

strekship

Posted
Posted

What are you talking about? If it gives you a popup then obviously your copy may be illegitimate. Would you like them to give you a paragraph explaining what's going on with pretty colors and icons? :rolleyes:

That is not exactly what I was getting at. For me, it makes no differene since i run legit and have had no WGA issues. However, for some people who may have been ripped off and are computer illiterat they may need a little more explanation than "your copy of windows failed to validate".

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+mrbester MVC

Posted
  • MVC
Posted

People who bash the WGA remember:

MS have the right to install any software that helps prevent copyright infringement. It's all in the EULA. So that class lawsuit won't work. The judge will simply throw the Windows EULA at whoever started the suit.

You don't know that as noone has tried it. However, contract law in UK states quite categorically that if any part of a contract is not agreed to and the contract cannot be changed to not include the disputed part, then the entire contract is null and void. It is also quite specific about what constitues "acceptance" (as in signature), and clicking a button (which might well have happened automatically) does not constitute a signature. No signature, no binding contract.

It is alleged that EULAs are not valid contracts because there is unfair advantage to one party as well as the click-through "acceptance" that has no proof of who actually did it. So far this would be a successful claim in a UK court. YMMV.

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