Microsoft Admits WGA Phones Home
Microsoft acknowledged reports Wednesday that its latest update to Windows Genuine Advantage (WGA), an anti-piracy program implemented to detect counterfeit copies of Windows XP, phones home to the Redmond company on a daily basis.
News of the occurrence surfaced this week after privacy advocate Lauren Weinstein confirmed Internet murmuring that a connection was being made to Microsoft's servers even after WGA had validated a Windows system as legit. Microsoft quickly responded to the issue, saying the feature was a "safety switch." WGA, which was made mandatory last July for downloading updates from Windows Update, is still considered a pilot program to Microsoft. It says the "call home" functionality was designed to enable the company to shut down the program in case of a problem, such as an influx of false positives.
The addition came as part of a WGA notifications program rolled out in April. The expansion would cause users running counterfeit versions of Windows to be notified directly on their desktop that their operating system was not
