I don't see the issue with pushing Genuine Advantage as a Critical Security Update at all. If a copy of Windows isn't genuine then it may not be receiving normal security updates. It's also possible that a pirated copy of Windows came with other non-genuine code isn't it?
If Microsoft are providing a security product for "free" why shouldn't they expect the copy of Windows and Office etc to be genuine? As Ben said, nothing is free, they have to cover the costs somehow so why provide free things to those who stole the OS in the first place? Any company trying to protect their revenue from "theft" isn't "just wrong". Seriously, I've never understood why the anti-Microsoft brigade think they should be able to use Microsoft's products for free and then of course when Microsoft does hand out freebies find ways to be negative about that as well. -----Original Message----- From: Angus Scott-Fleming [mailto:[email protected]] Sent: Sunday, 26 September 2010 1:22 PM To: NT System Admin Issues Subject: Re: Bink.nu | Free Microsoft Security Essentials Coming for Small Businesses - Bink.nu On 23 Sep 2010 at 18:50, Ben Scott wrote: > I tend to avoid Microsoft's security products simply because of > defense-in-depth. It's a "Who watches the watchmen?" thing. We're > talking about having a Microsoft product watch for security issues in > Microsoft products. I think it's more likely for a third-party > product to spot things, simply because of the different point-of-view. > This reasoning doesn't apply to everything (known-bad signature-based > detection, for example), but for things like heuristics and rule-based > detection, I'd expect Microsoft's own people to be more susceptible to > Microsoft's systemic blindspots. +1 If Microsoft didn't push out "Windows Genuine Advantage Notification" and "Office Genuine Advantage Notification" as part of their automatic "Critical Security Updates", I might trust their automatic updating procedure more. But pushing out revenue-protection spyware as part of "Critical Security Updates" is just wrong. IMHO, YMMV. ~ Finally, powerful endpoint security that ISN'T a resource hog! ~ ~ <http://www.sunbeltsoftware.com/Business/VIPRE-Enterprise/> ~ --- To manage subscriptions click here: http://lyris.sunbelt-software.com/read/my_forums/ or send an email to [email protected] with the body: unsubscribe ntsysadmin ~ Finally, powerful endpoint security that ISN'T a resource hog! ~ ~ <http://www.sunbeltsoftware.com/Business/VIPRE-Enterprise/> ~ --- To manage subscriptions click here: http://lyris.sunbelt-software.com/read/my_forums/ or send an email to [email protected] with the body: unsubscribe ntsysadmin
