More Spyware from Microsoft

[hech54]

Microsoft faces second class-action spyware lawsuit

A second class-action lawsuit filed in less than a week against Microsoft alleges that a central pillar of the company's anti-piracy effort — installed automatically on millions of computers — amounts to spyware.

But the attorney behind the first suit, filed on behalf of a Los Angeles man, said the company addressed many of his concerns in a software update it issued last Tuesday.

The second suit, filed Friday on behalf of a group of Washington businesses and individuals, appears to refer to a test version of Windows Genuine Advantage (WGA), a Microsoft program that is designed to check whether a user is running a legitimate copy of the company's operating system software.
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/businesstechnology/2003103175_microsoft04.html

BUT not for me...I spotted something fishy about that one
a while ago and left it un-installed....

[fritzi93]

That summarizes pretty well what bothered me about WGA:

1) The initial release phoned home daily. Daily, why!?
2) It was not disclosed that it did so.
3) For users with "Automatic Updates" turned on, it installed as if it was a "critical" update. Critical for whom?
4) You couldn't get rid of it without doing a system restore. (I may be wrong about that, but that's how I got rid of it).

Funny how Microsoft has been backpedaling furiously on this issue. Surely someone at M$ should have suspected that a lot of folks would be pissed?

[EDIT] I forget, did it even show up in Add/Remove Programs? As to point 4, perhaps one could go into Windows -> INF -> sysoc.inf. When the sysoc.inf Notepad window appears, delete "hide" from all lines under "Components". (Assuming in folder options you've already got it set to show protected OS files, file extensions, hidden files, etc.) You should then be able to: Start -> Control Panel -> Add/Remove Programs -> Accessories and Utilities -> Details. All previously hidden options now appear.

Or am I completely wrong?, been known to happen.

[jimmalenko]

All I did was change my automatic updates to notify only, then I deliberately unticked the WGA update. It then asks if you want that option hidden permanently, to which you say yes.

Funnily enough, they later released another update, which then reversed this "hidden forever" workaround

AFAIK it's working again though.

[Poppa_Meth]

You could change a registry value that allowed it to appear in the add/remove dialog. I uninstalled it through a more manual method I found on some website or another and it's been gone for all purposes that I can tell. I also noticed that Automatic Updates keeps asking about it on each new release regardless of whether you've checked to hide it or not.

[cal_tony]

A couple of weeks ago I received a pop up notice from Microsoft stating that my version has been updated a number of times and I would have 3 days to re-activate it. ( it is a Purchased Home version of XP that has been on the same hard disk and computer for about 4 years so I thought it strange that they would want me to re-activate it after all this time. I did use the number they supplied to re-activate it, and received the message that I had a valid copy of XP. After reading this post, I have a better understanding of what that was all about.

[SanderMan]

There's a Remove WGA tool at http://www.firewallleaktester.com/removewga.htm

[marshalljames]

Boot Into Safe Mode, search wgatray delete wgatray.exe and rename wgatray.dll to .old.Both are in system folder.end of problem.