Windows XP assumed you were a pirate until you called home
Windows XP required retail buyers to activate with Microsoft within 30 days
The market's verdict: -5.2% on MSFT in the week after.
What actually happened
Windows XP shipped on October 25, 2001 with Windows Product Activation baked in. Every home and small business buyer had to check in with Microsoft within 30 days or the system would stop working, and the license latched onto one machine's hardware fingerprint. Swap a motherboard and you got to explain yourself to an activation center to keep using software you had bought. Critics called it a privacy invasion wearing a business model. Activation was cracked within weeks of launch, so the people it reliably inconvenienced were the paying ones, a tradition the company still honors.
This one is officially acknowledged.
They did it more than once
First your copy of Windows phoned home to prove you paid; then it upgraded itself without asking.
Links
↳ caused by Windows XP
Timeline
- Oct 25, 2001 Stood by it Microsoft stood by it.