Microsoft Gets Sued for Windows Genuine Advantage (WGA) Tool
Microsoft is finally getting into trouble with its Windows Genuine Advantage (WGA) Tool. I covered the possible privacy violations in a previous blog posting. Now, Microsoft is facing a class action suit filled in the US District Court in Seattle for alleged privacy violations.
The suit, filed in U.S. District Court in Seattle on Monday, concerns Microsoft’s Windows Genuine Advantage (WGA), an anti-piracy tool the company introduced in July 2005. The WGA program collects hardware and software data, delivering it to Microsoft servers. The stored information is then used to warn of possible piracy violations.
The lawsuit alleges the program violates consumer protection laws in California and Washington state, and laws against spyware, invasive programs that surreptitiously collect data.
Personally, I feel that if Microsoft’s Lawyers fix the wording on the tool’s EULAs and make users accept these EULAs before installing they are within their rights to enforce these “features” (which include the use of user information which is protected by privacy laws). Trouble only occurs when Microsoft does not make this clear. Therefore, that critical update should be described more clearly and a EULA is presented to the end user for acceptance. This way Microsoft’s bases are covered.
However, I find it strange that Microsoft has not modified they EULA yet and the installation process of the “Notifier”. They should have started doing something about it when this issue first erupted a few months ago. Now, they will have a lawsuit on their hands. The precedent (Sony) does not look good for them too.
