Forum Discussion
Office 365 "The fine print" popup message - is it legitimate?
It is not mentioning malware because it is not a malware. One can click on the advisory to read details. I haven't read the details. It was enough to email my users to click Accept when it appears after Office updates. In our case it doesn't come up again and is not blocking Office usage. Have more pressing issues than a simple license agreement popup..
In important ways, it is "malware" -- it is inadequately sourced, so it could be "spoof'ed"...
The behavior is clearly wrong -- i.e. prompting for accepting a license that has already been accepted...
... and, even if it is Microsoft's mistake, there is no way to determine that it is harmless without triggering unknown events... (so, for example, it is entirely possible that it would be "accepting" additional activities that a user did not want...)
Thus, users should not be clicking on something like this... it should only be happening at an install sequence...
Completely agree - incidents such as this and the Windows 10 1803 BSOD update have all but destroyed my confidence in Microsoft. Microsoft has a very real and serious credibility problem.
Mark Tompkins wrote:In important ways, it is "malware" -- it is inadequately sourced, so it could be "spoof'ed"...
The behavior is clearly wrong -- i.e. prompting for accepting a license that has already been accepted...
... and, even if it is Microsoft's mistake, there is no way to determine that it is harmless without triggering unknown events... (so, for example, it is entirely possible that it would be "accepting" additional activities that a user did not want...)
Thus, users should not be clicking on something like this... it should only be happening at an install sequence...
Mark Tompkins wrote:In important ways, it is "malware" -- it is inadequately sourced, so it could be "spoof'ed"...
The behavior is clearly wrong -- i.e. prompting for accepting a license that has already been accepted...
... and, even if it is Microsoft's mistake, there is no way to determine that it is harmless without triggering unknown events... (so, for example, it is entirely possible that it would be "accepting" additional activities that a user did not want...)
Thus, users should not be clicking on something like this... it should only be happening at an install sequence...
I heartily agree! I was a little shocked at an earlier post that read, in part, "It is OK to Accept. My version of the Agreement really didn't say anything....it didn't look like the standard Microsoft agreement. "
This is not normal behavior for a product that was installed months or years ago. Simply clicking "Accept" in boxes that pop up out of nowhere is a recipe for disaster.
