Microsoft "Genuine Advantage" phones home

Post by **XMEN Gambit** » Sun Jun 11, 2006 9:11 pm

We've all suspected for a long time that Microsoft knows more about your computer than it's telling. Someone finally published some evidence:

http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?stor ... 8002958907

Turns out that with Microsoft's "Genuine Advantage" tool, your PC sends information to Microsoft every time it boots. And if you leave it on, it also does so periodically. This information is not anything they need to know, and it is not something for which you granted consent. It includes things like your hard drive serial number, user locale info, BIOS information, and your SID (Your SID is an encoded user id that uniquely identifies the user account).

The article is long, but there's a lot of important stuff in there.

Post by **XMEN Gambit** » Sun Jun 25, 2006 11:12 am

A follow up on this in the following link:

MS will publish its privacy rules in August

We'll see.

XMEN Ashaman DTM · Post by **XMEN Ashaman DTM** » Sun Jun 25, 2006 5:41 pm

You are a funny man, Gambit.

I didn't think MS had privacy rules. :lol

Post by **XMEN Gambit** » Sun Jun 25, 2006 6:56 pm

Sure they do. Our privacy, their rules.