Text 11998, 57 rader
Skriven 2006-07-05 17:41:06 av /m (1:379/45)
Ärende: MS: 20% of WGA failures not caused by pirated keys
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From: /m <mike@barkto.com>


http://blogs.zdnet.com/Bott/?p=89

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You don't need to look very hard to find outraged Windows customers who have
been branded pirates by Windows Genuine Authentication. And a hefty number of
them claim they're being unfairly targeted, with legitimate Windows copies that
are being tagged as stolen or pirated. I've heard from several dozen people,
and I've also seen credible stories posted on Microsoft's public WGA
newsgroups.

Now, via e-mail, comes confirmation from Microsoft that its false positive rate
might be unacceptably high. Microsoft’s PR agency apparently e-mailed other
tech reporters to try to spike the WGA “kill switchö story I reported on last
week. Eric Lai of ComputerWorld got the memo and basically reprinted it with no
analysis (Microsoft denies WGA kill switch in Windows XP). But Lai's story does
include one interesting new detail, a statistic that Microsoft confirmed in a
follow-up e-mail to me:

   Through its spokeswoman, Microsoft said that “80% of all
   WGA validation failures are due to unauthorized use of
   leaked or stolen volume license keys.ö

Oh, really? Turn that statistic around: Microsoft said that 20% of all Windows
users who fail the WGA validation test are not using leaked or stolen keys.

So what is the reason for WGA rejecting the other 20% of Windows licenses?
ComputerWorld apparently didn't ask, so I fired off an e-mail to Microsoft's PR
agency, who passed along a response from Cori Hartje, Director of Microsoft
Genuine Software Initiative:

   While we will don't have specifics to share on other forms
   counterfeit installations, they mostly result from activities
   such as various forms of tampering and unauthorized OEM
   installations.

Yes, that's exactly what they wrote. Besides being woefully ungrammatical, it's
also imprecise. How many are caused by tampering? How many by unauthorized OEM
installations? And what exactly are those categories? Note that there's no
admission that some of those failures might be false positives.

Trying to pry answers out of Microsoft is difficult, because they refuse to
grant interviews on this subject. And taking one question at a time via e-mail,
with a lag time of a day or more between question and answer, is just
insulting.

I'll keep beating on this stone wall for as long as I can stand it.
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Some interesting links within the article on the web...

  /m

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