On Tuesday Microsoft will make WGA more intrusive and will use scare tactics to make users validate and purchase a legal copy. On 4/25/06 Microsoft will start WGA Notification in the US, UK, Australia, NZ and Malaysia. The WGA notification has been running as a pilot in several countries such as Norway, Taiwan, Sweden, Israel, Denmark, Poland and other countries.

Some users will begin to receive the update as early as Tuesday next week. When a user goes to WGA to validate and/or download things like IE 7.0 or Media player or take advantage of the Buy Local offers they may receive the notification if their copy is not genuine.

Up until now if you didn't validate your copy of Windows nothing happened, but now with the WGA Notification, every time you reboot your computer, log-in and periodically (every hour or so) Windows will display a nag screen “reminding” you to validate your copy.

From the first time users get the request to validate they have 14 days to comply. After 14 days they will not be able to download security upgrades such as IE7 and Windows Defender. Critical security updates will still be available like it is now.

Microsoft hopes that by notifying users that they are not eligible for all security upgrades it will drive more users to purchase a legal copy of Windows, and also report the counterfeit dealers that sold them their copy. In some cases Microsoft will give a free license to users who are victims of a high quality counterfeiting.