Guys I'm enjoying this and would be glad if we can keep it going till some solutions comes out. Oh! hold on.. we can exclude 17th March if you know what I mean.
Back to the point.. my only concerns about this M$ issue of gathering info from M$ product users is a bit insecured. Firstly, I would say apart from they using it for whatever they would, there will come a time where these info would be passed on to other third-party institutions to use.
Secondly, I wonder if 'Black Hats' are listening and watching. I can bet some are close in using these backdoors which has been created by M$ to exploit systems, most of them to are on the verge of turning to be M$ and playing with system with no authorization.
Where does that leave the 'average' person, who thinks Symantec or other internet security suite which he/she was convinced to buy and that would protect their systems do. He sits there happily doing his online banking, whiles M$ scans his/her pc and gather their info on the background and send it to a location we don't know.
I may sound paranoid but I'm better off with FreeBSD on my laptop, Fedora Core on my server and Win Ser*er 2004 doing my printing. My printer info could be taken away but hey its an old one from the computer auctions. Perhaps I could get a free upgrade printer when they realised it's more than 8 years old and would print only black and white.
I'll rather lose my last breath on advocating for Linux/Unix like OSs than a 'Genuine Backdoor Advantage OS'.
my 2 pence worth...
A smart person knows what to say, but a wise person knows whether or not to say it.
'When perfection comes, the imperfect disappear.'
