-Caveat Lector-
from:
http://www.phillynews.com/inquirer/99/Mar/08/front_page/SOFT08.htm
<A HREF="http://www.phillynews.com/inquirer/99/Mar/08/front_page/SOFT08.htm">
Windows 98 has secret: A code to track users </A>
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Windows 98 has secret: A code to track users
A unique serial number can be planted within electronic files. That
raises privacy concerns.
By Ted Bridis
ASSOCIATED PRESS
WASHINGTON -- Microsoft Corp., whose software runs most of the world's
personal computers, admitted yesterday that its latest version of
Windows generates a unique serial number secretly planted within
electronic documents that could be used to trace the authors'
identities.
In a disclosure with enormous privacy implications, Microsoft also said
it was investigating whether it was collecting the serial numbers from
customers even if they explicitly indicated they did not want them
disclosed.
"If it is, it's just a bug," said Robert Bennett, Microsoft's group
product manager for Windows. "If it is indeed happening . . . we'll
absolutely fix that."
A programmer, Richard M. Smith of Brookline, Mass., noticed last week
that documents he created using Microsoft's popular Word and Excel
programs in tandem with the Windows 98 operating system included within
their hidden software code a 32-digit number unique to his computer.
The number also appears in a log of information transmitted to Microsoft
when customers register their copies of Windows 98, even if they say
they do not want details about their computers sent to the company.
Microsoft's Word and Excel programs are among the most widely used, and
its Windows operating systems run roughly 85 percent of the world's
personal computers.
"Nobody to my knowledge has had a database that would allow a piece of
written material to be traced back to who wrote it," said Smith,
president of Phar Lap Software Inc. "I don't expect Microsoft to do that
kind of tracing, but it's sort of unprecedented."
Bennett said Microsoft would create a software tool to let customers
remove the number, which he said was meant to help diagnose problems for
customers who called with technical questions.
Smith suggested, however, that Microsoft also could use the technology
to identify stolen copies of Windows by comparing the hardware serial
number with a 20-digit Windows product number that also is transmitted
when a customer registers. The industry claims annual losses from
software piracy at more than $11.4 billion.
"If they suddenly see the same product ID number with different hardware
ID numbers, it gives them evidence for court that there's software
piracy," Smith said.
Bennett said Microsoft was looking into whether the number, called a
Globally Unique Identifier, ever was obtained from customers who did not
want details about their computer hardware disclosed, such as their
network addresses.
The identifier is partly based on a 12-digit number unique to each
network adapter, a device common in business computers that allows
high-speed Internet connections.
Bennett promised that Microsoft also would wipe any of those numbers
from its internal databases that the company can determine may have been
inadvertently collected.
Privacy activists were not mollified.
"This is going to be a cleanup job larger than the Exxon Valdez oil
spill," said Jason Catlett, president of Junkbusters Corp. of Green
Brook, N.J., which lobbies on privacy issues. "There are billions of
tattooed documents out there."
The controversy follows criticism of Intel Corp., the world's largest
manufacturer of computer processors, which designed its new Pentium III
chips to transmit a unique serial number internally and to Web sites
that request it to help verify the identity of consumers.
Congress is weighing whether to propose new federal privacy laws
governing the high-tech industry, and the Federal Trade Commission has
had tough words for the Internet industry for its failure to protect
privacy rights. Last year, the FTC successfully pressed for a law that
prohibits Web sites from collecting personal information from children
without parental permission. Microsoft was a founding member of the
Online Privacy Alliance, a Washington-based trade group organized last
year to lobby against new federal privacy laws.
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�1999 Philadelphia Newspapers Inc.
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