Microsoft WGA Phones Home Even When Told No 403
Aviran writes "When you start WGA setup and get to the license agreement page but decided NOT to install the highly controversial WGA component and cancel the installation, the setup program will send information stored in your registry and the fact that you choose not to install WGA back to Microsoft's servers."
the route your kids take to school, of course (Score:4, Interesting)
can't RTFA because they're slashdotted already.
This is good (Score:5, Interesting)
when we normally click "I DONT Agree" the software does nothing. But if it sends the message back home with statistics of how many dont agree, it tells the software company some people dont agree.
We can argue EULA's till our fingers are raw and bloody, but it doesnt matter if the company in question doesnt read the conversations.
In short, by clicking the Dont agree button and having it sent home to MS we're telling them we dont want that crap on our machines. Maybe (deity willing) MS will start to listen. More companies may adopt that approach and we'll get less and less one sided (retarded) EULA's.
anyone Remember Borland's |"like a book" EULA? Great stuff.
on a related note (Score:5, Interesting)
The damn thing picked/guessed a valid (NATted) IP address, netmask, and gateway without using DHCP (arp tricks?), and sent a load of mystery packets to an address in a Microsoft IP block. Only then did the computer do the "new device detected" routine, but could not find a driver for the NIC and I had to go fetch one on another machine.
W T F ?
Unfortunately I have since lost the pcap dump.
Moderation: -1, no proof
Re:time to modify the hosts file (Score:4, Interesting)
All the old Macromedia studio products also phone home too...
That means Adobe Dreamweaver etc...
Re:the route your kids take to school, of course (Score:5, Interesting)
Petty, I know, but fun.
Re:So? (Score:3, Interesting)
Why yes, I did. And yes, I did agree.
So now, explain what that has to do with me telling WGA to not install, and not agreeing to allow it to send this information, and it sending it anyway. You are aware that contracts do have limits and only apply to the particular transaction, right? If I buy two cars from a dealership and agree to pay $300/mo for one and $200/mo for the other, the dealership cannot bill me $600/mo while claiming that my agreement to pay $300/mo covers both cars, as you seem to claim that my agreement to allow WU to send information to microsoft overrides my disagreement for WGA to do the same.
Re:This is good (Score:5, Interesting)
anyone got a way to dissect it completely so we can write a little app to send maybe 20-30 fake entries a day? now spread that across 100-300 people and microsoft thinks that there is a mass rejection of WGA starting to brew.
Re:Gibberish (Score:2, Interesting)
In fact, that looks almost exactly like the WGA Validation POST.
Question is, why's it doing it before installation, and even if you declined the WGA EULA? That's not right, and it's quite possibly in breach of regulations. It should just quit in that circumstance.
MS knows when you PC is on? (Score:3, Interesting)
assuming this isnt a fluke, that really frightmens me, the fact that MS knows when any of my PCs are online.
Re:Like the GPL? (Score:3, Interesting)
Clear language is necessary for clear communication. It could be argued that licensing language is necessarily esoteric and complex because of the way our legal sytem has developed, but if that is the case then there should be a layman's summary in the license preamble. If hundreds of slashdotters can concoct concise, accurate summaries in response to every GPL question posted, why not put one in the license itself so people will actually read it and understand what they're getting into? And aren't we geeks supposed to abhor inefficiency? =)
The GPL is used as an example and is not a specific target - I am arguing that all licenses should clearly inform licensees of their effects, and that even a good license can contain gotchas.
Re:Like the GPL? (Score:3, Interesting)
I'm not trying to pick on you, I've seen something like this said in a couple of places. However, it is simply not true. If it were, then no-one would be able to run the software (as the default in the US is "no rights").
However, it is true that the part of the license that applies to running the software is rather short:
"The act of running the Program is not restricted".
Your point about the GPL being more understandable is bang on though. Perhaps sheer size isn't the best indicator, but the GPL (sans preamble and other unrelated fluff) is only about 2k words long, with a total of 12 clauses. The Microsoft XP (Home) EULA [microsoft.com] (sans identification info, foreign language versions, etc.) is nearly 4k words long, with a total of 30 numbered and subnumbered clauses and 6 more paragraphs.
At the risk of going back on-topic, I notice that 2.3 and 2.4 give the software the right to "phone home" without notice to you.
Maybe I'm misunderstanding something here, but ... (Score:2, Interesting)
Where's the fire here?
Looks like (Score:3, Interesting)
UGD: Not sure. Looks like a UUID.
HDSLN: Hard disk serial
USID: User security identifier (id of logged in user, Microsoft can tell if you're any of the default SIDs like Administrator)
CSID: Computer security identifier
So Microsoft can tell whether you're an admin or not, they know the unique ID of the computer (CSID), your account if you aren't "Administrator" and - perhaps - the hard disk. If UGD turns out to be something that is unique to each individual copy of Windows, then all the people who've ripped it off could find life inconvenient in the future. I'm not sure what the tracking implications are, it depends how many Microsoft products report the HD serial or USID to them.
Re:Like the GPL? (Score:2, Interesting)
The GPL isn't about freedom. It's about being selfish in the guise of supporting the community.If you aren't going to profit off the code, you don't want anybody else to be able to either.
First and foremost copyright prevents you from distributing work that you have not created and therefore the GPL gives you an additional freedom.
Now could the kettle please stop calling the pot black. Nobody ever said they didn't want to profit from the GPL. Everyone wants to profit. It's just not in cash but in help, support, innovation, improvements....etc. What you seem to be looking for is slave labor. Where you can re-brand someones work and not pay anything for it.
If you want to use someones code ask them for it just as you would with Microsoft. Please don't do as Microsoft, copy code, Windows 2000 TCP/IP stack, and hide the copyright where nobody can see it. have the courtesy to give the author credit. Selfish? Who are you calling selfish?
WGA Got me a free copy of XP - I was ripped... (Score:1, Interesting)
Instead of the MS police knocking down the door it gave me a form to fill out and sent it to them with a copy of the recipt - gave the guy one more chance to make good before sending it in and after a colorful exchange mailed it.
sure enough I got a new serial to activate. Funny but if I wanted an actual disc I have to pay, the copy will work fine I hope.
Funny thing is I just really wanted a discount for not having windows since I'll probably run Fedora or pref. FreeBSD but haven't heard how it works on a laptop hadwarewise yet? This weekend I'll be playing.
Isn't MS being sued for NOT protecting privacy? (Score:1, Interesting)
The other aspect is that having a machine CPUID and even a disk drive ID, and perhaps a NIC card, your account name, etc it would be a PERFECT cache of data for law enforcement to want for the purpose of determine whether or not you WERE on the net grabbing RIAA sensitive data or pron.
Can you imagine surfing on someone's wireless connection, and it's calling home with info all the time? It would seem to be to be a sure fire way to determine whether someone is really downloading copyrighted stuff or can use the "someone else used my wireless connection" defense.