Action taken against illegal traders

Microsoft works hard to stamp out illegal and counterfeit software. Part of what we do involves educating computer shops and online sellers about exactly what’s legal and what isn’t. Sometimes though, we believe legal action is the best way to protect our customers from the very real risks of fake software. But even when we go down this route, we always try to work with illegal traders to get them back on track.

On this page, you can see who we’ve taken action against in the UK (by region) over the last 12 months. And of course Microsoft isn’t the only organisation trying to protect consumers from counterfeit and illegal software. So we’ve also included computer shops that (for example) Trading Standards took legal action against. In these cases we were involved to help highlight dangers such as identity theft and computer viruses.

You’ll see when you click into the details of each trader that they have admitted to different types of piracy like hard disk loading, counterfeiting etc. For a quick guide to what these terms actually mean, please click here.

England | Northern Ireland | Scotland | Wales

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