Buyers beware! There is a drove of pirated Microsoft software floating around on the net these days. I recently purchased a copy of Microsoft Office 2003 Professional OEM from another auction site. The software included 1 copy of MS Office 2003 along with BCM (Business Contact Manager). When looking at the CD through the plastic cellophane I noticed that there was a smear on the inside. It seemed that it had been re-packaged.  I figured that I better do some investigation after finding this to make sure it is authentic as I recently read on MSN that there were some major counterfeit operations that have been busted in the US and China. This is a quote from Microsofts Website regarding counterfeit software:

"The Business Software Alliance (BSA) estimates that "a high percentage" of software sold on auction sites is counterfeit. Sellers may claim the low price is for “liquidated product” or due to having an agreement with Microsoft. They may say that the disk is a backup copy or offer a special price for a compilation CD (with software from multiple publishers on one disk or CD)."

The software I received looked great on the outside, packaging looked authentic and I could even see the hologram CD through the case. I took the cellophane off the packaging and sure enough the smear was on the plastic underneath. Someone had re-packaged this!

I opened the package to take a closer look at the CD. Counterefiters have figured out how to duplicate the hologram CD and they usually make a copy of the authentic CD and place a hologram sticker on the copied or cloned CD to make it appear authentic. I felt around the edge of the CD and did not find any evidence of there being a sticker on the CD. You are supposed to be able to feel a ridge on the CD if a sticker has been placed on it. I took the BCM CD out as well to see if it had a sticker over it and it did not. One thing I noticed between the 2 CD's was that the holograms were slightly different in color. The BCM CD had more of a copper color to it. Something was strange here!!

Next thing I did was open my web browser and go to http://www.microsoft.com/piracy/howtotell and found the Office category. It is a great resource and it tells you everything to look for. There are many things in the hologram that you can look for that are supposed to change when the CD is tilted. One of them is the Microsoft security patch. When you tilt the CD, the Microsoft logo located at the bottom middle of the CD is supposed to change to the word "GENUINE". That did not happen when I tilted the Office CD but it worked great on the BCM CD...further evidence that this was re-packaged.  I also noticed problems with the stereogram (the little logo on the top right)...it was a lot lower quality than the one on the BCM CD. Microsoft states that a low quality stereogram is something else to look for as signs of counterfeit. This also got me looking at the COA affixed to the back of the CD. I looked up different versions of COA's on the Microsoft Piracy site and found that the COA was not even genuine. The vertical print on the side is supposed to be an actual woven thread...this one was not. It was clearly just printed on there. I was able to contact the seller of the software and get a refund. He had no idea that these were counterfeit and refunded my money right away.

Hope this helps all of you. Know what to look for when purchasing Microsoft software to make sure it is genuine. As I found out, there are some very high grade counterfeit CD's out there and there are many things you need to look for to determine that your software is genuine if you are not buying from an authorized dealer or retail store. Any CD you purchase could be counterfeit and there are great resources on the web to do your research. Microsoft also has some new software that it installs on your computer during a Windows Update that will detect Microsoft software that is not genuine. Make sure you do your research!!