Windows XP activation technology revealed



King Nothing pointed us to an article on C|net about the Windows XP activation technology. According to a study done by a german copy-protection company the software does not invade anybody's privacy, and is a lot more forgiving of hardware changes than has been speculated by many people.

Many have worried that minor changes to a PC's configuration may require people to reactivate their copy of Windows XP, while others have been concerned about the amount of information Microsoft could collect on customers.

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In a paper published on the Web on Monday, start-up company Fully Licensed found there's little to fear.

The paper discloses that Windows XP activation uses the IDs of 10 different hardware components to form the basis of a PC's fingerprint and proves that such fingerprints cannot be used to identify individuals.

Among the components that make up the hardware ID are a hard drive's volume serial number, the network card's MAC address and the identification string for the CD-ROM drive, the graphics card, and the microprocessor.

You can read the entire article here. Do you think this new technology will give many problems?

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Source: C|net

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