Microsoft Office is probably the most pirated software in history behind Microsoft Windows itself. It is not uncommon to find among our acquaintances someone whose PC displays “Why take the risk? Buy a genuine Office key” warnings or activation requests every time they open a doc file.
However, Microsoft is determined to attract those users convincing them to acquire a legitimate license. And … what better way to do it than offering discounts? As reported by GHacks, several users have begun to see messages under the toolbar of their Office programs with the following message (in English):
“Get up to 50% off. For a limited time, save up to 50% on a genuine Microsoft 365 subscription.”
Yes, surprisingly, despite the fact that the “pirated” product in this case is the desktop suite, Microsoft is trying to redirect users to its cloud service.
On the one hand, it offers obvious advantages for the user once they are willing to pay for the license; on the other, it is possible that For many unlicensed Office users, an MS 365 license remains an unaffordable luxury even after the 50% discount.
But if we decide to click on the message, a page on the Microsoft website will open where the user will be instructed about the potential risks associated with the use of “pirated software” (security threats, data loss, lack of support for updates, etc.) …
… And next to that, we will be shown the aforementioned discount offer for MS Office 365; an offer in which we must log in with our Microsoft account to verify if we are eligible for the same (in my case, I have received a message clarifying that I am not, which I understand because I already own an Office license).
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An American-only offer?
But there may be another reason for this: the offer is displayed on the page in dollars, even though I am not accessing the Internet from the US and my browser is not set to English. I realize then that the URL includes an “/ en-US /” which would indicate that the offer is only shown to US users for now.
In fact, changing that portion of the URL to “/ en-ES /” shows us a ‘page not found’ notice, proof that Microsoft is limiting the geographic scope of its initiative for now.