Several years ago, a third party published a detailed analysis of Windows Product Activation because of privacy fears similar to those raised here:

http://www.everything2.com/index.pl?node_id=1103347

Efforts like this one reduced fears of WPA as a privacy risk. Most of the accusations laid against WGA seem identical to those laid against WPA four years ago, with the exception of WGA "phoning home" to see if it should stop running.

If the security industry truly cares about the data WGA returns, let's see an example. Show me the data. By comparison, blatant spyware's been analyzed to death with packet sniffers, transparent proxies and DNS cache inspections. Until I see that example, I'll reserve judgement against WGA for later.

I think the industry has better things to critique than WGA, especially with all of the security software that breaks under Vista's User Account Control, but I'm digressing.

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Link to this comment: http://www.securityfocus.com/comments/columns/409/33784#33784