Remove WGA – Disable Windows Genuine Advantage Notifications
Windows 7 has been published for almost a year, many users upgraded or migrated to the Microsoft new brand operating system, and satisfied with it.
As we all know, using a pirated Windows copy comes with continually problems or risks including (and not restricted to) security, legal issues, and constant notifications from WGA (Windows Genuine Advantage). But there are still a significant number of people using pirated Windows 7. So Microsoft released a
WAT update package KB971033 to disable
“Windows 7 activation crack” like
RemoveWAT,
Chew-WGA or
other Windows 7 Loaders, and then display WGA Notification screens to remind users to pay for genuine software products.
However, if you confident with your genuine Windows 7 copy, then KB971033 hotfix will be dispensable for you. In fact, the WAT update adds many unnecessary files and system components to Windows 7, send some of your personal data to Microsoft
(although MS announced that users information will NOT be abused). What’s more, KB971033 will check your system for illegal use every 90 days…
Sounds terrible? Don’t worry, you of course have the right to stop it!
You can manually uninstall KB971033 if the hotfix has been installed automatically. And the second choice to fix the issue is the tiny tool –
RemoveWGA.RemoveWGA will enable you to easily remove the Microsoft "Windows Genuine Advantage Notifications" tool, which is calling home and connect to MS servers every time you boot. Futures updates of this notification tool will (officialy) setup the connection rate to once every two weeks.
Once the WGA Notification tool has checked your OS and has confirmed you had a legit copy, there is no decent point or reason to check it again and again every boot.
Moreover, connecting to Microsoft brings security issue for corporate networks, and privacy issues for everyone. It is also unclear which information are transmitted (Microsoft published an official answer, but an individual study brought some questions).
All of that, along the fact that Microsoft used deceptive ways to make you install this tool (it was told you it was an urgent security update, whereas it is a new installation giving you no extra security) makes me calling this tool a spyware.
Also, Windows Genuine Advantage Notifications is different than Windows Genuine Advantage Validation. RemoveWGA only removes the notification part, phoning home, and does not touch the Validation part.
Note: Some antivirus and antispyware programs flag RemoveWGA as being infected/malware, although the application is perfectly safe and does not pose a threat to your system. This is called a 'false positive'. The term false positive is used when antivirus software wrongly classifies an innocuous ( inoffensive ) file as a virus. The incorrect detection may be due to heuristics or to an incorrect virus signature in a database. [Similar problems can occur with antitrojan or antispyware software.]For pirated software users: “If you like it, just buy it!”
