Launched in July of 2005, the Windows Genuine Advantage (WGA) program was designed to deliver additional benefits to fully licensed customers of Windows, help protect honest businesses from counterfeiters, and help Microsoft better protect its intellectual property and combat Windows piracy. WGA is one of many programs Microsoft uses to address the problem of software piracy.
In June of 2006, Microsoft expanded Windows Genuine Advantage to include a service called WGA Notifications. WGA Notifications was created to alert people using a non-genuine copy of Windows that they might be victims of software piracy and to help them resolve the issue.
None of the information collected by WGA will be used by Microsoft to personally identify or contact you. To help you validate your software, the WGA tools must collect a certain amount of configuration information from your computer. The data collected includes:
For more information about how this data is collected and used, see the document entitled Technical Market Bulletin on Product Activation in Windows XP found in the Additional Information section of the Microsoft Product Activation page.
In addition to the configuration information above, status information such as the following is also transferred:
As standard procedure, your Internet Protocol (IP) address is temporarily logged when your computer connects to a WGA website or server. These logs are routinely deleted.
We use the information to:
When a system fails WGA validation, users are frequently surprised and upset.
Often, users have no idea that their copy of Windows is counterfeit. The most common situation is what we call the "repair shop" scenario. In this scenario, a genuine Windows user takes their PC to be repaired. Unbeknownst to the customer, the repair shop installs an unlicensed copy of Windows. The customer has no idea that this happened.
Another very common scenario is someone who buys a new PC from a dishonest business that charges them for genuine software but installs a pirated copy. The user knows they have paid for their copy of Windows, but they are actually running pirated software. When WGA alerts them to the use of counterfeit software, the user might feel confused or think the WGA test is inaccurate when, in fact, they have been taken advantage of by the business from which they acquired the counterfeit copy. Microsoft is working hard to educate customers to insist upon genuine Windows. We are also working with our legal and investigative teams to help identify resellers who deal in counterfeit and pirated Windows, thereby protecting our honest partners.
Additionally, customers who believe they have been victimized by software piracy can submit their counterfeit copy of Windows to Microsoft for evaluation and may be eligible for a complimentary replacement.
While a false positive is possible, it is extremely rare. Across over 200 million WGA validations, we have identified only a handful of false positives. Almost all of these were due to data entry errors that were quickly corrected and only occurred for a short period of time.
No part of Windows Genuine Advantage is spyware. Broadly speaking, spyware is deceptive software that is installed on a user’s computer without the user’s consent and has some malicious purpose. WGA is installed with the consent of the user and seeks only to notify the user if a proper license for Windows is not in place.
