Microsoft Accidentally Releases Office Anti-Piracy Nagware WorldWide

A big oops. Remember when I discussed Microsoft's trial of a new anti-piracy system for Office, which would nag users of counterfeit Office software? Well, the Office Genuine Advantage notifications update was supposed to only be trialled in Chile, Italy, Spain and Turkey. Through a(nother) mix-up, it was accidentally released worldwide for a short time.

According to Microsoft's WSUS (Windows Server Update Services) Product Team Blog,

On April 15th the Office Genuine Advantage (OGA) notifications update (KB949810) was inadvertently published to WSUS servers for approximately twenty-four hours. This update was intended for Microsoft Office users in the pilot countries of Italy, Spain, Turkey and Chile, but because of WSUS publication, it became available to WSUS managed clients inside and outside of these intended countries. This update has since been removed from WSUS. For servers which synchronized the OGA update package, the package required a EULA acceptance before it could be made available to WSUS managed clients, via either manual approval, or auto-approval rules.

Well, the good thing is you had to accept a EULA in order to get the update, so most likely if people read the EULA (and we all do that, don't we?) the wouldn't have mistakenly installed this update.

Of course, as Microsoft would say, if you had a legit copy, you have nothing to fear, right? Where have we heard that before?