Microsoft Study Finds Pirated Software Unreliable, Sky Blue

By Greg McNevin

October 6, 2008: According to a new study commissioned by Microsoft, companies using unlicensed copies of its Windows operating system are more likely to have system trouble and experience headaches from lost data than those using genuine software.

Conducted by the Harrison Group, the survey looked at 1,600 medium-sized companies (those with between 24 and 500 computers) in the U.S., the U.K., China and Brazil and found that 890, or 56.3 percent were using unlicensed software.

Harrison nots that this group is 43 percent more likely to have serious computer problems, 73 percent more likely to lose their own data, and 28 percent more likely to lose customer data.

While correlation does not necessarily equal causation and the study is backed by Microsoft in the first place, one has to take the results with a grain of salt, however, it is not much of a stretch to believe that a piece of pirated software is likely to have some errant and potentially malicious code hiding inside.

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