WGA - Spyware?
Posted on June 15, 2006
2 Comments
Perhaps I shouldn’t have taken the effort to get WGA Validation stuff installed. After reading this article from Windows Secrets titled, “Genuine Advantage is Microsoft spyware” I’m feeling a bit suckered. I’ll say that article is bit “excitable”, but geeze. There are some interesting claims in there. Well worth a look if you’re running Windows.
The leadoff paragraph:
Windows Genuine Advantage — the controversial program Microsoft auto-installed as a “critical security update” on many PCs starting on Apr. 25 — not only causes problems for many users but has now been proven to send personally identifiable information back to Redmond every 24 hours.
Ok, that sucks. The article goes on to discuss Microsoft’s definition of spyware, the author’s and others’ definitions and then hits the high/low points of having this stuff around. The conclusion even offers some ways to live with it. The 3rd option is my favorite:
Step 3. Prevent WGA from phoning home to Microsoft servers. The WGA process that calls out to its remote masters can be blocked by 2-way software firewalls such as ZoneAlarm and McAfee. To do so, simply deny the connection when your firewall pops up an alert about Windows Genuine Advantage trying to use the Internet. Alternately, hard-code a denial via the firewall’s user interface. No ill effects of preventing WGA from establishing a connection have been reported.
Just for grins, I took that advice. My software firewall? Microsoft’s Live OneCare (beta) 
I present Exhibit A:
Tags: microsoft, spyware, windows-secrets
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2 Responses to “WGA - Spyware?”
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Ayup, did the same thing on mine the first time it tried to call home. ZoneAlarmed it into a little corner and told it to sit there in Time Out until Microsoft agrees to play nice. They don’t have permission to call home every time I turn on the computer to verify if this is genyoowine stuff… they can do it once and set some software cookie or registry thing or something, but no fair with the unauthorized phone home garbage.
I wish it was…