Microsoft's antipiracy tool phones home daily
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| This has alarmed some people, such as Lauren Weinstein, a civil
| liberties activist, who likened it to spyware in a blog posting.
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| Microsoft disputes that notion. It said that WGA's regular call home
| is innocent and done for necessary maintenance purposes.
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| No meaningful data is exchanged during the check-in with Microsoft,
| which happens after a computer starts up, the software maker said.
| Regardless, the company does receive a user's IP address and a
| timestamp, Weinstein said in his blog posting.
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| "We can argue about whether or not the tool's behavior is really
| spyware," Weinstein wrote on his blog Tuesday. The question is
| whether Microsoft has provided sufficient notice, he added.
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