<Microsoft to address Windows 98 privacy issue>
Gee, Intel is taking all this flak for facilitating the abuse of an electronic serial number, but Microsoft has been committing this sort of abuse for years.
So far, at www.junkbusters.com, there's only a one-line blurb about the Microsoft thing. And at www.epic.org, there's been absolutely no mention of this yet. Why aren't they jumping on Microsoft like they're jumping on Intel?
Yeah, yeah, the two situations are different, but it still seems like a double-standard to me. Besides, in Intel's case, you can always choose not to buy a Pentium III. Go with a Celeron, Pentium II, even an AMD processor. But in Microsoft's case, no one had any idea that Win98 was transmitting an electronic identifier during the registration process, even when the user specifically elected not to send data about their hardware. At least Intel told people about the processor serial number. Microsoft never told anyone about this registration "feature."
Tenchusatsu |
