Windows Genuine Advantage False Positives

Microsoft has presented an overview of the Windows Genuine advantage tool's performances earlier this week. A total of 512 million users have had their Microsoft software products validated by the Windows Genuine Advantage mechanism.

According to Cori Hartje, director of Microsoft's Genuine Software Initiative, a staggering 22.3% of those users had their software labeled as non-genuine. The non-genuine euphemism is used due to the false positives generated by the WGA tool. Despite the fact that Microsoft has admitted the existence of false positives, licensed copies of software identified as non-genuine, the company has been reluctant to provide a figure to account for the extent of the erroneous detections. Hartje only revealed that less than one percent of the non-genuine detections are false positives.

A Microsoft representative working with the Windows Genuine Advantage crunched the number in relation to the 512 million validations, contesting the fact that the number of false positives is of millions: "this number was calculated by taking a previously disclosed 'half of one percent' estimate of false positives against into the total number of validations (512 million). Calculating the false positive isn't quite that easy, the rate of false positives climbs and falls when issues are discovered then fixed. Given that the false positive scenarios are time bound in this way it's not right to just use that number as a lifetime average."

Microsoft cannot account for the number of software installations that have not been identified or passed through the Windows Genuine Advantage mechanism. In fact, the users have to be active participants in the validation process as WGA will only launch with consent from the person in front of the desktop. Moreover, the Redmond Company has no way of estimating the volume of non-genuine products in function that have not gone through the WGA process.

"We don't have specific numbers on that but the system has been designed to give the benefit of the doubt in many cases. We are also in the process of designing a 'yellow light' scenario where instead of simply giving the benefit of the doubt we will be able to offer specific information to the user about whatever didn't seem right with the system. We can then offer tools to help them to figure out whether their copy is properly licensed and genuine and fix the cases where the system appears non-genuine when it really is genuine," added the WGA team member.