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Piracy and illegal software...

Today proved to be another interesting day... We took on a new client recently and found that all 48 computers in the facility were custom built computers by a local IT Support company. Many of the computers did not have COA's and we have been performing Hardware and Software Audits of the clients' infrastructure.


While setting up the clients offsite backup, (they never had one), we found on the server a license file that contained Volume Licensing that not only did not belong to this said client, but belonged to a local non-profit company. We asked the Supervisor of the company if they had any knowledge of this spreadsheet and they were in the dark and pointed to their previous IT Support Company.


The next day I had a conversation with the IT Director of the non-profit and she informed me that they also had never heard of our client, but did in fact have the same IT Support company as a common denominator to this equation.


We opened a piracy complaint with Microsoft and TechSoup as did the non-profits IT Director. It is a safe assumption that, that IT Support Company may not be in business much longer.


Have your IT Support company audited by a third party IT consulting company. Your could be legally liable for illegal software you may not be aware of.


- Priority Support