A lesson in spyware

My friend felt that he hadn't been told in an obvious way what it was going to do to his computer. But, apparently, if he had wanted to know more, he should have clicked on the tiny, very light blue, "details" word in the screen shot above. If he had done, it would have told him this.

So that was his fault.

In addition, apparently neither of us can now remove this tool. It is destined to sit on our computers forever (unless we reinstall Windows).

Belatedly, I remembered what the lady had told me and I checked online to see what people thought about the WGA. If you want to know, try typing "Windows Genuine Advantage" into Google. Quite a few people don't seem to like it; certainly my friend's less than thrilled.

Oddly enough, I like it. I believe that people should always use genuine copies of Windows software; so I like having a copy of WGA on my machine. It makes me feel proud to be verified, almost as if I belong to the Microsoft club in some way.

That's not my problem. My problem is that, just briefly, I thought I understood what spyware was. I thought it was software that doesn't tell you clearly what it is going to do, that makes your computer behave in ways you don't like, slows it down and causes pop ups you don't want to see. There is obviously something here that I don't understand. I think I'll talk to the nice lady again and see what she says this time around. Perhaps I could get her to ask Toby. He is, apparently, a guru. ®