Telstra has revealed the addition of almost one million new mobile services in the six months to December 2011, but Sensis revenues plummeted 24 percent in 12 months.
In a stunningly frank admission, Microsoft has admitted that nearly half of all Australians believe that it’s okay to use pirated software for personal use. The study commissioned by Microsoft Australia is being used to promote its new Office Genuine Advantage (OGA) program which has been launched in Australia today.
The OGA, like its sister program Windows Genuine
Advantage (WGA), operates through the Windows updates service. Both OGA
and WGA seek to root out pirate copies of Microsoft software by doing
online checks of users' hard drives.
With the new OGA program, users will have to opt in to allow the system
to confirm that their copies of Office are genuine. If they choose not
to, they won't be able to get important security updates, support,
downloads or templates.
The implementation of WGA and OGA has led to a fair measure of
criticism from sectors of the user community who, in the case of WGA,
have objected to computers deemed to be running pirated Windows being
disabled by Microsoft. There has also been criticism of cases of the
program returning false positives.
According to Microsoft spin, however, OGA is more about protecting
users from pirated software than catching pirates. Microsoft wants to
convince the 45% of users who said OK to using pirated software on its
survey that they are putting themselves in harm's way.
“While the survey found that virtually every Australian (98%) considers
it important to keep their computer safe from viruses and online
threats, people are putting themselves at risk by using pirated
software which has been shown to be 43% more vulnerable to viruses and
spyware,” says Steve Johns, Consumer Product Manager, Microsoft Office
Business, Microsoft Australia.
According to Microsoft, with security top of mind for Australians, it
is a worrying statistic that almost half (47%) of those surveyed
wouldn’t know how to check if their computer software was a genuine
copy, thereby exposing themselves to the risk of security threats.
“Using genuine software and knowing how to check that you have
authentic copies of computer programs is a fundamental way of
protecting yourself and ensuring that your PC and personal information
are secure,” said Johns.
From today, Australian Microsoft Office customers will be able to opt in to get OGA notifications.
If an Office application is found to be non-genuine, a pop-up dialog
box will alert the user and provide options on how to acquire genuine
Microsoft Office and secure their PC. Microsoft is adamant that OGA
notifications will not affect the way Microsoft Office works on
individual computers and the user can continue to use Office as before.
David Bass
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