If you buy a new PC or Mac, you might be able to transfer the activation, but there’s a very good chance that you won’t be able to do that. ![]() The bigger objection, as far as I’m concerned, is that these licenses are intended to be installed on one PC, for use by one person. I’ve seen multiple credible reports from people who purchased one of these product keys and then found their product deactivated just a few months later. But they can revoke those keys and have been known to do so, sometimes months after they were originally activated.Īnd that’s not just a theoretical risk. Microsoft might decide that it’s not worth cracking down on small-fry customers who bought a product in good faith. Do you feel lucky? It’s possible these products will work forever. The glass-half-empty types in the audience know that Microsoft can revoke your activation rights at any time. Trust me: You do not want to be the defendant in a civil suit with Microsoft alleging that you’re using improperly licensed software.īut on a personal PC or Mac, the risk that the Microsoft License Police will show up at your door is about as close to zero as it gets. No fancy Google fu required.) What could go wrong?Īre you the glass-half-full type? If so, you could look at my experience and say, “It’ll probably work, so what do I have to lose?” I might try to talk you out of that if you’re trying to buy software for your business, especially if you have any disgruntled former employees who might call Microsoft’s piracy hotline and rat you out. (If you’re really intent on doing this, by the way, you can track down one of these product key resellers directly, cutting out the publisher and the e-commerce intermediary and chopping the price in half. StackCommerce and their publisher partners get a generous cut of each sale, and in a media marketplace where publishers are struggling to find revenue, it’s an irresistible pitch. I’ve seen these offers on some very big sites, names you would recognize instantly. In this case, the actual seller goes by the name “nerdused,” but lately I’ve seen identical offers from a company called “Definitive Lab.”īecause the deal is offered under the imprimatur of a trusted publisher, often with a by-lined article from the publication’s “deals editor,” you’re much more likely to trust it. StackCommerce acts as a broker between well-known publishers and unknown sellers. You probably wouldn’t consider giving your credit card information to a shady-looking website, which is why this particular offer is so interesting. But the software should work as expected, and if you aren’t bothered about the technical details of license agreements then that might be all that matters to you. ![]() I repeat: If you buy one of these product keys, you don’t have a valid license, as far as Microsoft is concerned. And it would be trivially easy for an ethically challenged IT person in a large corporation to copy some unused license keys and sell them to someone who would in turn resell them on one of these e-commerce sites.) (Some Visual Studio subscriptions, for example, come with a passel of license keys intended for evaluation purposes. This outfit is selling “gray market” product keys that are harvested from a variety of sources and aren’t authorized for resale. If you see inaccuracies in our content, please report the mistake via this form.Let’s make something clear right up front: If you pay for one of these offers, you are not buying a license. If we have made an error or published misleading information, we will correct or clarify the article. Our editors thoroughly review and fact-check every article to ensure that our content meets the highest standards. Our goal is to deliver the most accurate information and the most knowledgeable advice possible in order to help you make smarter buying decisions on tech gear and a wide array of products and services. ZDNET's editorial team writes on behalf of you, our reader. Indeed, we follow strict guidelines that ensure our editorial content is never influenced by advertisers. Neither ZDNET nor the author are compensated for these independent reviews. This helps support our work, but does not affect what we cover or how, and it does not affect the price you pay. When you click through from our site to a retailer and buy a product or service, we may earn affiliate commissions. And we pore over customer reviews to find out what matters to real people who already own and use the products and services we’re assessing. ![]() We gather data from the best available sources, including vendor and retailer listings as well as other relevant and independent reviews sites. ZDNET's recommendations are based on many hours of testing, research, and comparison shopping.
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