Geek.com Geek News - TurboTax installer destroys non-Windows partitions

Geek.com Geek News - TurboTax installer destroys non-Windows partitions As April draws nearer, millions of Americans are looking forward with their usual zeal to filling out the labyrinthine forms required by the Internal Revenue Service. Intuit has made a profitable business with its TurboTax software designed specifically to ease the burden of filing taxes, but its latest version throws something into the mix that's got pretty much all of its customers furious: Digital Rights Management (DRM) that can destroy non-Windows disk partitions.

The technology is called "SafeCast," and it's designed to prevent users from making illegal copies of the TurboTax software. But the method it uses to accomplish these goals is pretty drastic. It includes writing to a partition area of the hard disk that is typically unused by Windows, but which could hold all sorts of valuable data if you use a different operating system or are set up for dual booting. Users have reported losing entire hard drives due to this "feature." What's worse, the DRM software stays put on your machine even if you uninstall TurboTax. The DRM portion of TurboTax is provided by Macrovision, a company that does not exactly have a history of looking out for customers' fair usage needs.