James Delahunty
25 Apr 2006 3:18
Microsoft has stepped up its Windows Genuine Advantage Desktop Notifications trial by including the United States, United Kingdom, Malaysia, Australia and New Zealand. The Desktop notifications tool displays a message saying "This copy of Windows is not genuine; you may be a victim of software counterfeiting" if the installation doesn't pass the security test. The message displays at startup, login and randomly during use of the operating system.
People can decline the tool or completely uninstall it if they wish. To suppress messages, you need to right click on them. Since it's lunch in 2004, Windows Genuine Advantage has been beaten by simple workarounds discovered and spread by hackers. Microsoft setup WGA to try find suppliers of pirated copies of Windows XP and give a user a chance to buy a legitimate copy instead.
Over 150 million PCs participated in the program so far. PCs found with a pirated installation will be blocked from downloading tools such as Windows Defender and Windows Media Player. Security updates are not blocked under any circumstances however. Microsoft's next operating system, Windows Vista, will include similar security checks that will disable several of the operating systems features if it isn't found to be a legitimate installation.
Source:
ZDnet