Last week Microsoft was sued in a Washington district court for allegedly violating privacy laws through its use of Windows Genuine Advantage (WGA) anti-piracy mechanism in Windows XP. Is WGA a legitimate anti-piracy tool or is it spyware? This latest class-action lawsuit (it’s not the first to target WGA) claims that Microsoft made false claims regarding what information WGA would send to verify the authenticity of a Windows installation. Specifically, the lawsuit highlights that Microsoft claims that no personal information is sent during validation, while in fact WGA is said to provide information on the user’s IP address and other details that could be used to trace the user. The complaint goes on to state that Microsoft described WGA as a necessary security update rather than highlight to users that it was an anti-piracy update. Also, the way WGA means that users are prevented users from removing it from their PCs following installation.