Microsoft secretly plants and collects a unique security code which can be used to track the author's identity. This should cause a bigger uproar than the Intel security code on the Pentium III. At least, Intel had the decency to publicly announce it and didn't try sneaking it in through the back door.
Anyway, they are all helping pave the way for Wave.
WASHINGTON (March 7, 1999 4:22 p.m. EST) - Microsoft Corp. admitted
Sunday that its latest version of Windows operating system, which runs most of the world's personal computers, 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 is investigating whether it is collecting the serial numbers from customers even if they explicitly indicate they didn't 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 Smith created using Microsoft's popular Word and Excel
programs in tandem with the Windows 98 operating system included within their hidden software code a number unique to his computer.
The 32-digit Windows number also appears in a log of information
transmitted to Microsoft when customers register their copies of Windows 98, even if they say they don't 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.
Smith compared it to a person's Social Security number being stamped on every document they create.
"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."
Steven Sinofsky, a vice president for Microsoft's Office products, which include Word and Excel, said the electronic documents contain only part of the Windows number, including 12 digits unique to each network adapter. Such devices are common in business computers and allow high-speed Internet connections.
In computers without such network devices - such as most home PCs - a
common "dummy" address is used, effectively making it impossible to
trace authorship of documents created on those machines.
"There is no reason for people to have these worries," Sinofsky said,
adding that Microsoft will disable the feature in upcoming versions of
the programs. "I'm super-sensitive to people's concerns."
Bennett said Microsoft will create a software tool to let customers
remove the Windows number, which he said is meant to help diagnose problems for customers who call 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 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 didn't want details about their computer hardware disclosed, such as their network addresses.
Bennett promised that Microsoft also will wipe any of those numbers from its internal databases that the company can determine may have been inadvertently collected.
Privacy activists weren't 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 bears remarkable similarity to the plot of "Ulterior
Motive," by Daniel Oran, a former Microsoft programmer who worked on
Windows until 1994 when he quit to write his first novel.
In the book, published last year, Oran wrote about the top executive at the fictional company "Megasoft" who builds eavesdropping technology into its dominant computer operating system that he exploits during a campaign for the presidency.
"This is a very serious privacy problem," said Oran, who laughed about
life imitating art. "The technology isn't good or bad. It's like a knife; it can be used both ways."
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. |
