Like some sort of bad horror movie villain that keeps coming back from the dead, another phone-home validation program is arriving from Microsoft.  Back in the days of Windows 98 it was the Critical Update Notification Tool that checked for updates but also opened up the possibility of serious security breaches, not to mention that checking every 5 minutes was a little excessive.  With Windows 2000 and XP, we saw the beginning of the Windows Genuine Advantage program, which was intended to keep people honest and drive them to purchase Microsoft’s OS instead of pirating it.  Unfortunately it was cracked immediately and the only people who really suffered were the honest customers, the pirates used the work around. 

Now according to this story on Slashdot, once again we will be seeing an update that will phone home to Redmond to verify the authenticity of your copy of Windows.  Keep an eye out for KB971033.

“The release of Windows 7 ‘Update for Microsoft Windows (KB71033)’ will change the current activation and anti-piracy behavior of Windows 7 by triggering automatic ‘phone home’ operations over the Internet to Microsoft servers, typically for now at intervals of around 90 days. … These automatic queries will repeatedly — apparently for as long as Windows is installed — validate your Windows 7 system against Microsoft’s latest database of pirated system signatures (currently including more than 70 activation exploits known to Microsoft). If your system matches — again even if up to that time (which could be months or even years since you obtained the system) it had been declared to be genuine — then your system will be ‘downgraded’ to ‘non-genuine’ status until you take steps to obtain what Microsoft considers to be an authentic, validated, Windows 7 license. … KB971033… is scheduled to deploy to the manual downloading ‘Genuine Microsoft Software’ site on February 16, and start pushing out automatically through the Windows Update environment on February 23. … [F]or Microsoft to assert that they have the right to treat ordinary PC-using consumers in this manner — declaring their systems to be non-genuine and downgrading them at any time — is rather staggering.”

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