this post was submitted on 15 Jun 2026
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I write about this one a lot, because people have forgotten how bad it was, thinking only today is bad. So let me grab my notes and copy and paste some detials:
They started product activation tied to hardware ID. They created tiers of what you purchased. WGA phoned home to Windows servers, and they ran programs in the background to check on your computer. All of the "validate before you download" started with Windows, IE, Media Player, Defender, and Office here at XP, and expanded every year to today.
They started forcing bundled applications and lied to consumers that they could not be separated (explorer and media player for example). They even offered software that would "remove" these types of packages, but it didn't, and this was after they said only third party tools could do it.
They began the cut-off dates to force hardware upgrades and windows upgrades.
They bundled messenger into XP and tried to get people to use MS Passport accounts. If you didn't use passport, you could not download music from the windows store. This was the beginnings of required windows accounts. They used the passport ID's to tie together users and specific hardware.
They used registration screens to trick users into thinking they had to have a passport just to access the internet. An online privacy organization got involved when they realized just how much data Microsoft was collecting.
MSN explorer was pushed into the start menu, and began microsofts efforts of getting people over to MSN to see ads. There was even a time it would do pop up ads for microsoft dial up, msn messenger, and premium subscription services.
Then there is Active X, tied to Internet Explorer. The EU antitrust investigation was on exactly this: was IE + Active X used specifically to keep people hostage in IE.
Telemetry began here as well. Product Keys, Hardware Fingerprint, IP address, Bios info, applications installed, usage patterns and configuration. You could stop this in group policies, but who was looking at those in the consumer space? Several class action lawsuits were filed and Microsoft themselves called their daily harvest of data "personally identifiable information".
tldr; Microsoft began the tactics of telemetry, lock in, restriction of features based on software tied to hardware, and creating a account to use all the features of your computer back in the Win XP days.