Ah, yes, the Virus Of The Month club.

Have you ever had that actually occur to you with software bought on eBay that's non-physical?

I've bought numerous Windows 7 and a couple of Windows 10 keys, plus a few MS Office keys, never had any issues.

Sometimes, the keys would require phone activation, but that was ages ago. Nowdays they just work.

The providers give you a key that you can use to activate, and a link for the ISO, but that part is optional. The keys work with untouched ISOs, too. FWIW, I once downloaded the seller's ISO and compared the hashes, and they matched up.

I may have to add, I live in Germany, which is part of the EU, and the courts here have decided key resale is completely legal and MS has to tolerate it.

["Volume license software may be sold individually"]: https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=auto&tl=en&u=https...

[original]: https://www.golem.de/news/bgh-urteil-software-aus-volumenliz...

Virus in the product key? That's something incredible.

True, I was thinking of software distributed on DVDs or ISOs.

A stolen or misappropriated product key is almost as bad as a virus, though. It will work great... but only at first, until Microsoft notices that 50,000 customers are using it.

I bet on some level they know and don't care. If you're buying a cheapo key off of ebay then chances are you were never going to pay the full price. Meanwhile they're still using the software, learning how it works, and growing the Windows ecosystem further. Vaguely like a loss-leader that gets people in the door.