The controversial Microsoft's anti-piracy tool containing the WGA Notification, tagged as spyware because it was phoning home at every boot even from PC's running a genuine copy of Windows, can now be removed by installing a tool called, what else, RemoveWGA. It seems that relaxing its WGA watchdog from every day check-ups to one every two weeks, as Microsoft has announced considering it a satisfactory solution, is not a sufficient one.

Firewall Leak Tester, a company that produces tools to test firewall quality, has released the RemoveWGA utility. The company has described the way in which its application functions revealing that all it does is to remove the WGA Notification component, which is responsible for the contact between the computer and Microsoft's servers. RemoveWGA will only work on Windows XP (SP1 and SP2) and is built to identify the installed copies of WGA Notification and to prevent it from activating at start-up.

"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," the company said in a note explaining its motive for releasing the tool. "The Validation part is mandatory for some, not critical downloads from Microsoft, but the Notification part is not mandatory at all, and you are able to install all of the security updates without installing this one. It is also unclear which information [is being] transmitted," said the company in a note explaining RemoveWGA.