What is a Certificate of Authenticity (COA)?
A Certificate of Authenticity is a document designed to demonstrate that the hand signed item is authentic. Having a COA does not mean the autograph is authentic. According to a story on a January 2006 episode of “Real Sports with Bryant Gumbel”, many of the items with COA´s on them are actually forgeries. COAs are incredibly easy to forge and should be treated with skepticism until they can be absolutely confirmed.
A Certificate of Authenticity (COA) is a label that helps you identify genuine Microsoft software. A COA is not a software license – it is a visual identifier that assists in determining whether or not the Microsoft software you are running is genuine. However, without it, you will not have a legal license to run Microsoft software. A COA should never be purchased by itself without the software it authenticates. To help you verify the authenticity of the Microsoft software you acquired, be sure that your software came with one of the following COAs (or a previous version) and that the COA includes the advanced piracy prevention features described.
A Certificate of Authenticity (COA) is a label that helps you identify genuine Microsoft software. Without it, you will not have a legal licence to run Microsoft software. A COA is not a software licence – it is a visual identifier that assists in determining whether or not the Microsoft software you are running is genuine. A COA should never be purchased by itself without the software it authenticates. To help you verify the authenticity of the Microsoft software you acquired, be sure that your software came with one of the following COAs (or a previous version) and that the COA includes the advanced piracy prevention features described.
A certificate of authenticity, or COA, is a proof of purchase that is provided with certain products. Most Microsoft® products, including their Windows® operating systems and office suites, come with one. Other software manufacturer’s, like Corel, provide COA documents with their office suites as well. A COA normally appears like a formal certificate with typical, hard-to-copy green swirl patterns around the edges to help indicate it is a legitimate certificate. It provides the name of the product it certifies and usually provides a certificate number, product key or serial number for the product. Depending on the product, a COA may come as a sheet of paper, a small card or as a sticker label attached to a manual, CD case or even to the computer. The Microsoft Windows operating system COA is provided as a sticker attached directly to a Dell™ computer (Figure 1). Figure 1 – Example of a Microsoft Windows COA label attached to the bottom of a Dell portable computer.
