boston.internet.com - Is Microsoft Licensing Forcing Banks to Break The Law? Lester Warby is the kind of guy who reads the fine print. And the fine print for the latest updates to Microsoft Windows has him worried. Warby -- who is the chief information officer at Seattle Metropolitan Credit Union -- believes that the terms for the end user license agreement (EULA) for Microsoft's Windows 2000 Service Pack 3 (SP3) and XP Service Pack 1, might well put the credit union in violation of new federal privacy laws. At issue is Microsoft's "automatic update" feature, which allows users to automatically get upgrades and patches to their systems. To get the updates, users must agree to give Microsoft access to information on their systems. That, says Warby, conflicts with federal regulations for financial institutions, such as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act of 2001. The new law, which goes into effect next May, forbids financial service companies from giving third parties access to customer data without express consent from the customer. European countries generally have even stricter data privacy laws. "We're forced into a position where we're either out of compliance with Microsoft's licensing, which is not acceptable, or we're out of compliance with the law, which is not acceptable either. Under these circumstances, we'll probably change our operating system," says Warby. [Privacy Digest]
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