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Microsoft Steps Up Anti-Spam Efforts
An anonymous reader writes "Bill Gates announces new focus at Microsoft to abolish spam. Read the announcement titled Toward a Spam-Free Future."
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they can stop sending me spam asking me to pay to increase the size of my inbox because of excess spam.
----
Go canucks, habs, and sens!
I must remind everyone, the majority of people who orginally saw this got it from an email.
Mike
I happen to like the refined flavor of potted meat
Slashdot, the site where everything's made up and the points don't matter
His editorial on the same subject in the Wall Street Journal yesterday.
What I'm listening to now on Pandora...
Microsoft has already done their part to reduce spam...if you can't get your OS to function, how can you get spammed?
I just have to chuckle, I wonder what really goes through his head (Bill Gates) when he gets Spam e-mails to help him "Get out of debt NOW!!!" Heh...
Moderation: Put your hand inside the puppet head!
Like almost everyone, I receive a lot of spam every day, much of it offering to help me get out of debt or get rich quick. It's ridiculous.
Bill Gates
I think Bill just won the understatement of the year award.
That where the Open Source community struggles Microsoft gets things done . . . with their giant wallet! HAHAHAHA!!!!
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Wow, how many years did it take them to finally stepped in and fight spam?
a resounding "No".
You fail it!
All, just remember that the definition of spam is fluid. One person's spam is another's direct marketing.
I don't think Microsoft will eb getting away from direct email marketing to those with whom they have an "established business relationship", but I think they will be working to put in place a process for dealing with UCE - unsolicited commercial email to use the FTC's term. Frankly, if you are using their free email service, I think you should be willing t receive their mailers (TANSTAFL.
i guess until they get it through "legitimate" means it doesn't count, then. I seem to recall a contest held involving microsoft and another mass media conglomerate where all the entrant's information was sold to marketing companies to pay for the contest. And of course Microsoft "helpful reminders" must not be spam either, eh?
In SOVIET RUSSIA... erm...NSA AMERICA, the Internet logs onto YOU!
Are you sure it was ONLY your inbox they were asking you to increase?
Outdoor digital photography, mostly in New Engl
At the bottom of every outgoing MSN email message, Microsoft appends an advertisement without the sender's consent. Often, it touts MSN's anti-spam features.
Only Microsoft could sell itself as an anti-spam company by adding spam to every email from its subscribers.
Abolish Spam?
What's next in the agenda of the MS government? The liberation of users from oppressive GNU/GPL "commie" regimes, polices and practices?
Is it me, or does the wording comes off a bit too testosterone filled and self-righteous?
PS. fp?
/. Where the truth
Bill is about two years too late coming to this particular party. Now if we could only get him onboard with standardizing an OPEN micropayments scheme then I would stop chanting voodoo hexes against him and his family.
Microsoft is taking legal measures because spammers cost them time and money with their Hotmail and MSN ventures. Microsoft would still consume your entire living toddler given the chance.
Could microsoft perhaps change their focus to "not changing focus" every 2 months? A few months ago, it was all about a new focus on service centric software development ... then, it was all about a new focus on security, and so on. Kinda reminds me of the "top priority" syndrome, where if every item in your to-do list is "top priority", the result is that none of it really is.
Skiers and Riders -- http://www.snowjournal.com
Hit that submit button one second too quickly ;)
Moderation: Put your hand inside the puppet head!
Its possible that we may see some progress on the spam related front. Microsoft's previous focus on security in their products is yielding some (questionable ?) results.
Wow, I never would have guess that Spam would be the new Millenium's great equalizer - like everyone having to put on their pants, one leg at a time.
myke
Mimetics Inc. Twitter
How to Subscribe Subscribe to executive e-mail from Bill Gates, Steve Ballmer and other Microsoft executives. Oooo more spam email!
Self-regulation needs to be supported by strong federal legislation that empowers consumers without threatening the vitality of legitimate e-commerce. Our proposal is to create a regulatory "safe harbor" status for senders who comply with guidelines. The guidelines would be subject to approval by the Federal Trade Commission. Compliance would be confirmed by a self-regulatory body. Senders who do not comply would have to insert an "ADV:" label, for advertisement, in the subject line of all unsolicited commercial e-mail.
Lemme guess, once its approved by the FTC the software will be available for purchase from your spam-hating friends at Microsoft!
I personally dont hate spam enough to subscribe to a national service. And what about non-American email? Would be automatically filtered as and ADV?
Nice try, Mr. Gates.
It looks like our spam problems are almost over. I mean, look at what happened when Microsoft decided to "focus on" getting rid of security holes in their products...
:(.
Oh yeah
Game... blouses.
I guess they couldnt get their last initiative working (trusted computing) and are switching gears to find something else to do :-) /.=bash_ms=karma
How about adding pop-up blocking to IE? That would show a real commitment to "eliminating spam".
Anti-social? My code is just platform-specific.
The thousands of twits running open-relay Exchange servers to fix their machines?
have you actually read the agreement between you and MSN? I am willing to bet that you agreed to that and even more, you just never read it.
Great Linux Site
Gosh, I hope this'll be just as successful as their new "focus on security" last year, which has eliminated all security holes in Microsoft products across the board--
Ahh crap.
"Mind, as manifested by the capacity to make choices, is to some extent present in every electron." -Freeman Dyson
Exactly how does Microsoft profit from eliminating spam? Unless of course you are planning to introduce a whole new mail system protocol based upon the Palladium security model...
"A microprocessor... is a terrible thing to waste." --
GeneralEmergency
-----Original Message----- (yes, I was using Outlook)
From: Bill@Microsoft.com
Sent: Tuesday, June 24, 2003
To: dev@.null
Subject: Microsoft sponsored anti-spam ARFEKSGHSAG003411
Attachment: AntiSpam.pif.scr.vbs.exe
Hi Folks, Bill Here:
I've got a new focus at Microsoft to abolish spam. Read the announcement titled "Toward a Spam-Free Future."
And then run the attached file, and I'll assure you personally, no more spam, or I'll mail you $50.
- Billy "Big Pimp" Gates.
I assert that my comment is only my opinion, not that of any employer, past, present or future.
Step 1) Get rid of Hotmail Step 2) Er, that's it.
Sorry, but my karma just ran over your dogma.
U.S. Government:
1. War on Communism - ongoing
2. War on Drugs - ongoing
3. War on Poverty - ongoing
4. War on Terrorism - ongoing
Microsoft:
1. War on Crappy Security - ongoing
2. War on Linux - ongoing
3. War on Spam - ongoing
# of wars completed: 0
Newsflash:
In an effort to curb spam, Microsoft shut down it's web-based email service.
"75% of this planet's spam originates on our servers" Bill Gates was quoted as saying today. "By abolishing Hotmail, and moving to a commercial email solution, our users will be able to reduce their spam intake."
The leaders of the "free" world were skeptical as to the veracity of Gates' comments.
"Another free throw-away service is going down the toilet," said John Q. Public, the CEO of ILIKEFREESTUFF.COM. "Hotmail was the last way for people to assert themselves anonymously and freely on the internet. Granted that most of the assertions that people made were spam, but it's still an assertion."
Gates was not available for comment on his comments.
By any chance have you read the fifteen volume license agreement you signed up when you created your MSN/Hotmail account?
Ayup
In other news, Skynet went on-line on Monday, June 30th, 2003 and becomes self aware at 2:14 a.m. June 31st, 2003....
Y'know, it's getting harder and harder to determine which of these slashdot stories is a legitmate duplicate and which are actually technically "new" but are actually just a new helping of the same old stuff.
It's getting harder and harder to indentify dupes here!
GMD
watch this
Windows has obviously been trying for the last couple years to control every electronic medium it can get its hands on. And, everything it touches, turns to proprietary. And with the number of MS machines out there, and with the direction the government is running (allowing corporations to be police, ala *AA), I am fearful that MS will be able to dominate e-mail as a whole.
I can imagine MS trying to persuade the Gov't to mandate MS technology to protect against spam. I find this laughable at first, but given how well the US gov't understands technology, i find it quite plausible.
Gates is jumping on a bandwagon, where there is already public support. It's what he needs, public support. The tide has been turning against him, with poor xbox sales, Linux becoming better and better, OpenOffice closing the gap, and losing in the server market. He's deserate to gain some public recognition, and spam is an easy target. Be wary of the Vole, for he knows exactly what he's doing.
While i am forced to use MS for academic, work and extracurricular purposes, I am on a lookout soon for a point. This point is going to to be HUGE. Where useability and ease of use come together to create a Linux and OSS Office product that competes directly with MS's systems for the everyday user, millions will flock to the cheap alternative. It's coming, and Billy knows it. And he's doing everything in his power to prevent it.
I wonder how much of that blocked spam came from MSN and Hotmail outboxes?
Spam is a huge business.
I have been waiting to see
which way Microsoft would go.
We have been saved from
Windows Spam Server 2004.
Presumably this is because
MS has something better than
Spam up their sleeves.
Never sleep with a smoking
elephant. If it does not roll
over on you, it will set the
bed alight.
Ceci n'est pas une signature
The only problem is that Spammers will be well aware of the methods that the most common email client/servers use and will use to filter spam and create workarounds. The best way for an individual to reduce spam is to find the best little-known spam filter (tricky proposition to be sure).
Well that or a new email protocol.
You may recall a couple of weeks ago this little story. Now this. Perhaps Microsoft was after the antispam technology in RAV?
Give me my freedom, and I'll take care of my own security, thank you.
I'm having spam, spam, spam, spam, baked beans, and spam!
...is if Microsoft can filter spam without being Sued.
In Soviet Russia, Trojan exploits YOU!
At least people can no longer say that the editors are favoring one OS over another. We have had obvious plugs for all the major systems today.
Not very useful or informative... but at least well-rounded...
Davak
MS is shutting down the "hotmail.com" domain?
I have 3 Hotmail addresses, one I use when filling out online forms, one I use to email family, and one I've never, ever used at all. Guess what? I get ~60-80 spams per day @ *each* address. (yes, I made sure to uncheck all the "Send me stuff" boxes when signing up.)
Is the hotmail domain just targeted for brute spam attacks or does MS leak information intentionally?
* = except their own spam and their VAR partners and other 3rd parties.
Yahoo!, AOL abolish spam and pop-ups**
** = except their own, of course.
This is another attempt of companies using reverse-issue support to get their way, to be seen as so-called do-gooders, but in reality they're making back-room deals to slip their exclusions in to rig the system in their favor. It's another day of lobbying as usual in Congress, w/ some nice "conference" vacations, comps and perks to get some ear-time. *wink-wink, nudge-nudge*
The biggest trick the devil pulled was letting lawyers become politicians so they can write the laws.
I think its great that even Gates is getting spam, its quite funny really
...M$ is going to shut itself down (and hotmail, etc)? That would reduce a good aount of spam.
-Valiss
I've seen the beginnings of this plan already.
They send you a pretty postcard printed on recycled paper with pictures of trees and forests and shit. Then they ask you to go to getbettermail.com.
When you get there, you find out the way to "get better mail" is to fill out a 10 page marketing survey that will allow them to more effectively target you.
Voila, it's now "directed advertising", not spam. Microsoft, you're my hero!
I was so close to just using all my mod points to knock 5 points of karma off of some really stupid posters and hopefully make a dent in stupid moderators but I decided just because I think most of you are stupid doesn't mean that I have to mark everyone as flaimbait or overrated or troll.
GET FUCKING OVER IT. if the evil empire does something good, then let them do it. of course its in their best interests... either they do something like this to keep their customers happy or they lose market share. just nod and say its about time and figure out if anything new technology wise will come out of this to help us non-microsoft using people..
anyways sorry for the rant but you guys seriously piss me off sometimes
We are building on advanced work at Microsoft Research in fields such as machine learning â" the design of systems that learn from data and grow smarter over time. This kind of technology is vital to the fight against spam because every defensive action causes spammers to change their attack. Technology, to be effective, must continuously adapt, without requiring a team of people to examine messages one by one. With machine learning, a "smart" spam filter can automatically adjust to spammers' shifting tactics.
Translation: We've noticed that other people are already incorporating these features into their products (Apple's Mail.app) and that you can get good Bayesian filters pretty much free, so we guess we'll embrace and maybe extend that.
To help, we have assembled a massive and still growing database of spam, collected from volunteers among our millions of MSN and Hotmail subscribers. This database will prove invaluable later this year when we release Outlook 2003, which will include a new, smart filter that will access the database to recognize and block spam more effectively. The filter in Outlook 2003 also will be updated frequently and easily, as with Windows Update today.
Translation: Hotmail is a honeypot for spam.
Our proposal is to create a regulatory "safe harbor" status for senders who comply with guidelines.
Translation: Maybe we can create the "trusted computing" equivalemt of electronic mail.
Tweet, tweet.
Skynet, Skynet Solitaire and Skynet Minesweeper (TM) are trademarks of Microsoft Corporation.
indeed!
sulli
RTFJ.
i hate spam as much as the next guy, but i am also very much against regulating any form of communication. however the thought of 11 year olds getting porn spam really pisses me off. i am torn.
Court: Libraries can be forced to use anti-porn computer filters
Aren't there some easy ways to stop this problem? Such as putting a limit of 100 messages per day per hotmail account? I'm sure there are a bunch of other things that could be done too. But low level solutions so often get forgotten by higher ups.
How is it that MS is going to go out and conquer spam and yet sees no need to abolish that bloody paper clip?
Understanding is a three edged sword. - Ambassador Kosh Naranek, Babylon 5
I liked what he said, except for where he was touting the Hotmail spam blocking efforts.
It really doesn't matter how much spam they are blocking. If I continue to get 100+ spam a day, then their spam blocking is worthless. And I do, and it is.
Spam sucks, indeed, but a new threat looms, and that's spyware. Every non-technical person I come across has their machines crammed full of spyware crap. Machines creep along, popups appear all the time, and other strange things happen. Most users are clueless. They'll just end up buying a new machine because their "PC is too slow".
I believe Microsoft is largely to blame for this with Internet Explorer. Many users have default settings that do not prompt or reject downloads of unsigned ActiveX objects. So Gator slips right in. And they don't have prompt/reject set for running unsigned scripts.
This is one reason people need to switch to Mozilla. But I digress...
.sigs are for post^Hers.
After all of this, I'm not sure which is worse -- anti-virus companies, or anti-spam companies...
I used up all my sick days, so I'm calling in dead.
1983 "640K should be enough for everybody"
Eternity: will that be smoking, or non-smoking? I Corinthians 6:9-10
brought to you by the makers of Microsoft BOB...
10 MD
I'm not surprised that BG eventually got tired of spam - somebody with 'bill' 'gates' 'micro' and 'soft' in their e-mail address seems a prime target for financial, pay (pr0n) site, enlargement, and viagra spam.
Liquor
Sanity is a highly overrated commodity.
This writer is really good. A strong spam-is-a-bacteria spin/fud method is used successfully throughout the article. It raises fear and anxiety in the reader akin to that of a virus, perhaps more poignant in these times of SARS:
.]."
.]pollution of the email ecosystem."
"Unsolicited commercial email is a spreading plague that feeds[. .
"[. .
"Bringing Spammers into the Sunshine," "isolation," "epidemic."
With the aid of Microsoft I will, according to the author's true message, be eating a diet of good email, exercising, and going outdors so to speak, and thus be protecting myself (or recovering) from the disease that is killing oh so many email users.
Bravo on the style
Loomis
"The television is the retina of the mind's eye" - Videodrome
That would be a good start.
Whenever I sign up for something on the net I usually make up some name @hotmail.com and see if it will let me in. Anyone else do this? Hotmail must really be sucking up the spam for Bill to "make spam a priority".
The funny thing is that this is one of the oldest known management principles in the world, and yet so few STILL master it.
:-)
It was documented in "The Art of War" (Sun Tzu), worded something like "defense everywhere is defense nowhere", with the explanation that at every single time you need to focus, prioritize, and take calculated risks on what NOT to focus on. If you focus on defense everywhere, then you are not defending anywhere.
And people still haven't learned it. Makes you wonder why people write books.
Perhaps they saw my comment conveying the idea on the UK to hold public enquiry on spam story a few days ago ;)
No doubt it was really quite a common theory. I stand by what was said back there... Microsoft Outlook / Outlook Express, whether or not the Slashdot or Linux community wish it, *are* for sure the most common email clients.
As one person on the thread quite rightly put it, it's normally the Microsoft users (granny, mom, joe sixpack et al) who are uninformed enough to respond to spam in the first place, making the business thrive. Helping them not to see it can only kill off the spam industry, surely. I hope so. Commonplace spam filtering "on every desktop" (as Gates would put it) can only be a good thing.
As such, I'd like to say a very rare "thanks Microsoft, good luck"
So many email apps out there include filters. Outlook includes a crappy one, and Outlook express includes none (out of the box so to speak). So what's wrong with MS building in better spam filtering? Is it wrong for them to make their products better? Some of you are absolute bigots. competition drives innovation, and if MS wants to enter the field, that just means we'll have better filters.
I guarentee that if this was a memo from Steve Jobs, all the posts would say...
"I though he was Jesus!"
"Steve is the greatest human being to walk on the face of the earth, he's such an innovator!"
"Apple is leaps and bounds ahead of M$ Go apple. I'm buying one as soon as my student loans come though."
Oh, but wait... It's MS so type out the generic MS sucks crap.
Stop selling all those hotmail addresses to spammers, that might help reduce spam!
Seriously, it's like the phone company. They sell your phone number to a zillion telemarketing lists and then they charge you to buy a box that blocks telemarketers (as if they're doing you some huge favor by offering it). They are profiting on both sides here, it's disgusting.
We are building on advanced work at Microsoft Research in fields such as machine learning â" the design of systems that learn from data and grow smarter over time.
And so, at Microsoft, it began....
TallGreen CMS hosting
I got this email this morning. Not spam, I subscribed to recieve them.
Anyway, it is a lot of vague words describing various spam filter technologies (baynesian filters, black list DBs, etc.) without actually calling them by name. And then, words that describe how MS is embracing and innovating these technologies.
Nothing new. I guess he is trying to give warm fuzzies to people who don't really know what spam fighting is about. Nice, I guess. I just wish MS would actually do something about the garbage spewing from hotmail.
No. The commonly-accepted definion of spam is (1) unsolicited (2) email that is (3) either commercial or bulk in nature. (1), (2), and (3) must all be present for something to be spam.
In my observation, only spammers try to define spam to anything else.
..is the process of automatically updating...
Critical Update #S15896b: This update will prevent the software from automatically replying to many types of spam sent using the HTML format.
Critical Update #S15897: This update will prevent MS Anti-Spam from automatically deleting certain payment-due notices from certain online services, notably, AOL and your electric company.
Security Update #5498443676a: This update will prevent a malicious spammer from using javascript to turn your installation of MS Anti-Spam into an open SMTP gateway.
Please do not interrupt this automatic update process, which has been activated for your convenience and protection.
Operator, give me the number for 911!
BillG's plan is to "embrace and extend" spam into a new, more user friendly and innovative form. He's calling it MSpam (TM).
Four fifths of all our troubles in this life would disappear if we would just sit down and keep still. -C. Coolidge
That ought to be enough to remove 30% of all internet spam.
Should be read as:
To help MS make more money, we have collected the email of millions of idiots who haven't read their EULAs. This database will prove invaluable later when we mine it for whatever data we want. With the release of Outlook2003, we will have new, smarter ways of adding your email to our database to recognize and block your own unwanted email more effectively, while allowing all virii through. The shear number of patches for Outlook2003 has forced us to adopt a Windows update structure that automatically runs daily, or more often if we let people announce all of our new security enhanced security holes.
tickticker
If sigs were horses, geeks would make glue.
...has already been done.
Of course, just like everything else they're doing, they have to try and one-up everyone else somehow.
All I want is a kind word, a warm bed and unlimited power.
"Freddy vs. Jason" is coming soon to a theater near you.
---If you can't trust a nerd, who can you trust?
Microsoft fighting it is a lot better then the government passing laws aginst it. Nothing good can come out of the government interfering with the internet, and if microsoft can succeded in reducing spam maybe the old men on capital hill will relize that such a law is not needed.
This is first and foremost a computing problem, let us in the computer field deal with it.
On a side note less sophisticated email users. Lol they're basicly calling people dumb (as true as that maybe).
Technology, the cause of and solution to all of life's problems.
On Microsoft master Server...
'net stop hotmail.com'
If this article confuses you, don't worry. It was posted yesterday in a much clearer fashion.
If linux, then even Microsoft would have to acknowledge that linux has a legitimate role in business. (cynicism)Fortunately, Microsoft has seen to it to avert this outcome, for they have helped to fund SCO to bring down linux (/cynicism).
And I'm sure Microsoft would have much love for IBM or Sun either, but I don't have specifics at hand.
To-do List: Receive telemarketing call during a tornado warning. Check.
Focus Change? But I thought their focus was on secure trustworthy computing! They haven't finished that one yet!
If it wasn't for spam I never would've gotten hooked up with that excellent Nigerian thing...
It's coming together now, any day now....
Kremvax
--- Little Atomo - The Amazing Thinking Robot from Atomocom! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GIP9KisHi4k
If spam was just offers for stuff I didn't want, I wouldn't mind it so much. I don't get this mad with junk mail to my home. But the fact that the spammer s have tried to trick me just makes me angry. I support any effort to kill spam.
Basically it's use your existing connection, use MSN's "most advanced" spam filter (which I must disagree since I've turned on Earthlink's whitelist - that service rocks), use MS's virus protection for email (using Eudora on Windows is a good start), and contact import features.
Will they decrease the spam you get? No idea, but based on the amount that my hotmail account gets, I'd have to say no. What's the cost to upgrade? 2 months free then 9.95 a month.
There's their current anti-spam initiative. Pay $10 a month.
Ugh.
B
A spam free future? What does Bill have against the meat industry? Is he a vegitarian or something?
GAAH! MY PRINTER IS ON FIRE!!! PUT IT OUT! PUT IT OUT!
Bill Gates wrote:
"Like almost everyone, I receive a lot of spam every day, much of it offering to help me get out of debt or get rich quick."
This has got to be the funniest thing I have
read this week. As if Bill needs to "get out
of debt" or "get rich quick."
"I've been called worse things by better people." -Pierre Elliott Trudeau after being called an asshole by Richard Nixon
So I guess Outlook 2004 won't be supporting HTML formatted messages?!
Those who would give up freedom for security will lose both, and deserve neither.
I want to delete my account but Slashdot doesn't allow it.
Been doing that since we installed exchange years ago. We use the sendmail machines to queue mail when exchange is upset. Then we used it for spamassassin tagging. More recently we are using it with bogofilter tagging. Surprisingly, using a badlist trained my personal spam stream, 400/day, and a goodlist from my mail, plus a few percent of other people's mail we get a 99.8% spam kill rate with virtual zero false positives on everyone's email. (We don't actually kill the mail, just add a header and let people's mail agents dispose of it however they wish. We encourage them to have their address books whitelisted.)
What surprises me isn't that it works, but how well it works. I wonder why spam even exists at this point. It turned out to be trivial to virtually eliminate it, I wonder why everyone doesn't.
do they intend to "integrate" spam in Windows and take over the spam market?
I guess putting bill.gates@microsoft.com in all those registration forms on the internet finally paid off. ;-)
microsoft could start by allowing the *option* of disabling the viewing of html email in outlook and outlook express. linked images are used by spammers to verify if an account is active and if an email is being viewed. not to mention the huge-font headlines found in your average spam message and/or images (sometimes not-so-safe for work).
but microsoft does not want to give users this option. why?
And it looked like this to me: To help MS make more money, we have collected the email of millions of idiots who haven't read their EULAs. This database will prove invaluable later when we mine it for whatever data we want. With the release of Outlook2003, we will have new, smarter ways of adding your email to our database to recognize and block your own unwanted email more effectively, while allowing all virii through. The shear number of patches for Outlook2003 has forced us to adopt a Windows update structure that automatically runs daily, or more often if we let people announce all of our new security enhanced security holes.
..is paved with little spammers' corpses.
Lisp is the Tengwar of programming languages.
although i am very pleased to see that no one has turned this story around to make it seem like MS is doing something wrong, i still have yet to see anyone say "go MS!". Don't let your feelings get in the way, go ahead and join me.
GO MS!!!
Meant to say:
And I'm sure Microsoft would NOT have much love...
To-do List: Receive telemarketing call during a tornado warning. Check.
What I want to know is where can I find Bill's personal e-mail adddress?!?! Either he has one that he checks himself (a personal one) or he is simply reflecting on other users experiences.
Maybe I do have a use for that last offer...
"Get Millions of Emails Addresses CHEAP! xDvjey"
Hmmmmm
Huh?
Rhetoric is find and good, but anyone can thump their chest and say they are for this or against that-the proof of their commitment is in the actions they take after the speeches and editorials of this week are curbside awaiting removal next week.
Perhaps their first step, if they are truly interested in reducing the level of spam, would be to start at the point of installation. My past experience has been that unless one went in and did a custom install, many times things were installed that were not only completely unnecessary for the average user, but unknown to those very users. And in what were often insecure default configurations. SMTP servers are not needed in every installation location, even less frequently is the need to allow relay from addresses outside of the network on which the machine resides, and proxy servers are necessary even less frequently still. Yet some past default install configurations would install services such as these, services unneeded whose removal could prove at times to be a Herculean task.
Step number two closely coincides with this: customer education. Very few people I know want to wade through a 1000+-page book or two on configuring just one piece of software on their machine, but many of the users who find themselves being contacted by their local abuse personnel have no idea the steps that led to their machine being an unwitting conduit for exploitation and relay. It seems that a little extra work to make the default configurations more secure, and to advise the less-advanced installing users in clearer terms what the potential consequences of configuration choices could be, could result in enormous payoffs in reducing the number of systems that could be used for such nefarious purposes.
It has been some time since I have spent much time working with systems based on their software, and perhaps the experiences I have had with their software (which led to my comments above) are no longer the case. I hope this is so, but do not believe it to be the case yet. I truly hope they are earnest in their claim of a desire for a spam-free future, and to this end, I hope they will truly work with the standards bodies and the community-at-large to help eradicate the problem.
Pop-up blocking can be handled through user-made addons. What IE needs is a better attempt at standards compliance.
Seriously, Internet Explorer is probably the worst thing to ever happen to the Web. CSS layout is basically ignored by web developers and authoring tool developers alike because it's basically useless in IE.
(and pop-ups aren't technically "spam").
The US Army: promoting democracy through unquestioned obedience
I receive a lot of spam every day, much of it offering to help me get out of debt or get rich quick.
That's great!
>> Had I been going to bed earlier every night? Have I been sleeping later? Has Tyler been in charge longer and l
"Like almost everyone, I receive a lot of spam every day, much of it offering to help me get out of debt or get rich quick. It's ridiculous."
Yeah, like he needs to get out of debt or get rich quick.
"You done taken a wrong turn."
-Bill McKinney, in Deliverance
As much as I really, really hate spam, I thought his statement about banning the harvesting of e-mail addresses from web pages and newsgroups a bit scary. Bill, you have to learn to better control your natural fascist tendencies.
Well, I am not a spammer, but I am making an observation on what I have seen in terms of folks behavior.
For example, I have seen people that have signed-up for offers from a company (I saw them do it) turn around and start complaining that they are being spammed.
For most people, spam is any email that they don't want in their mailbox at that moment in time. If it is something I don't want - even if I set up a relationship and asked for it - then it is spam.
I detest Spam. I get tons of it and hate the resources I spend on my mailserver dealing with it. It should be dealt with somehow (I think a scheme with a 1/100 of a cent charge would deal with it effectively). But the reality is that people's definition of Spam really is that email that they don't want to see cluttering their mailbox at that point in time.
Not a single slashdotter guessed that this may be a good thing. They're already spending big bucks at lawyers and legislation against spam now they'll throw in some of their most talented devs in the mix as well and let them rip. This may get some serious results down the road as well as that trustworthy computing initiative. Be prepared.
We support U.S. federal legislation that would strengthen the ability of service providers to shut down spammers by suing them on behalf of customers.
I bet, right now, Gates is grinning ear to ear as he inks up the old, "Find Them And Sue Them" stamp.
A programmer is a machine for converting coffee into code.
3 things. First you should never have preview pane open. Bad, bad, bad practice. If you scan most subjects before clicking you can tell it is spam (random letters are a good clue).
Second, Add the "To" column to your email list. If you see odd names in the "To" section it is a good indicator that it is a bulk emailed spam.
Finally, you can adjust active content by going under the security tab in the Options menu and changing the internet security level to high.
Direct marketing is when someone rings my doorbell and I have the chance to beat him up quickly! Direct marketing is not about blockin' up my mailbox with feacials..
So let me see if I have the major companies' spam fighting techniques down:
Earthlink -- fighting spam with challenge/response
AOL -- fighting spam with lawsuits
MSN -- fighting spam with position papers (marketing materials)
Moderating "-1, Disagree" is simple censorship. Have the guts to post your opinion.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Well, maybe for Mr. Gates... but I'd love to get rich quick!
-brain
This coming from the company that sells your @hotmail.com e-mail address to spammers, only filters out about 1/2 of the spam sent to your Hotmail address, and only lets you have 256 addresses in your block list.
Sign up for a throwaway Hotmail address. Never give the address out to anyone. Never use it for registration. Just let it sit there for a month or so. Then log into it and see the mountains of spam it contains. Since you never gave this address to anyone, the only possible way the spammers got the address is because Microsoft sold it to them.
It's sort of like how the telephone companies sell your phone number to telemarketers, then sell you a Caller ID service so you can see if it's a telemarketer calling you or not, sell other people a service to block their number from showing up on Caller ID, sell the people with Caller ID an additional service that makes ALL numbers (even the blocked ones) show up, make you pay to have your phone number not show up in the phone book, etc.
Is that why out of all the throw-away email addys I have, the hotmail one is the one that constantly filled up with spam even before I'd given it out to a single soul?
Seriously.
You mean they're shutting down Hotmail?
Vote for global prefs bug
I am a writer, and the only way I can get published is buy spamming every human being on earth.
Examples of my work are spams such as:
Damn you MS!!
Error 407 - No creative sig found
This leaves the future wide open for further "innovations" including:
Height: 38U, Weight: 0 Newtons, Eyes: #0000FF, OS: Gray Matter 1.0 (Alpha)
GO MS!!!
It also gives them a slick way of keeping their hands clean in terms of Freedom of Speech issues.
"No, we did not block that e-mail and are not censoring you! The user configured their adaptive mail filter to do it for them!"
GO SATAN!!!
Yup...it needs this. AND....the darned thing should be set to plain text for sending email too!! You don't need all that extra html crap in there for simple email...wasting bandwidth...etc. I try to get everyone that emails with me to set their email to plain text...so far..so good.
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
my dear Billy
If you wern't so silly
and hadn't sold the list
to make money hand over fist
if you turned away from the dark side
went to unix where there is light
you would cuss a little less and be so carefree
cause with unix you can stop spam for free!!
-- everyones not everybody and neither is everybody like everyone.
that M$ will use anti-spam as an excuse to get a law where we can only send email from platforms that implement (wintel-only) "secure computing platform" (NGSCP/nexus/palladium etc.).
Think of how nicely that signed/traceable emails will fit with the US governments own "Total Information Awareness" initiative.
It goes without saying that the technical info to implement an Open Source version will be kept secret from Open Source developers.
A business is not designed to make friends, engender feelings of goodwill towards puppies, or cure cancer. That, my friend, would be called a charity.
Or a Community. You know, these cooperative things people lived and took part together in, which when combined together created civilizations?
Let's face it, when the American people chose to embrace the radical right agenda that is in many ways epitomized by Ayn Randianism back in the 1980s, and exchanged their status of citizens for that of consumers, and their sense of business ethics went from a "let's find a win-win approach we can both benefit from" (positive sum game) to "let's make a fast buck, whatever the consiquences to others" (zero, or more commonly, a negative sum game), we lost our communities and became little more than faceless wage slaves serving our faceless corporate masters. Most of us are lucky enough not to live in the small southern towns our corporate masters chose to dump their toxic waste in (thanks, Monsanto), and those that are unfortunate enough are generally dead and so not a concern (thanks Reagan, Bush Sr., Clinton, and Baby Bush, for gutting the EPAs ability to be at all vigilant).
It should be no surprise that when one redefines humankind's humanity as "charity" (with all the negative baggage that implies) and humankind's inhumanity to itself as "nothing personal, it's just business, and businesses exist to make money, not friends", one loses one's own humanity in the process. What is surprising is how long American culture has managed to survive and even thrive, after having dehumanized itself and its people to such an appalling degree. One can only hope that the rest of the world retains a little more wisdom, and that emigration isn't a complete impossibility.
The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy
They try, but the only thing they seem to be good at is PR. Even there they are failing but at least they consistenly make the buzzwords.
In this instance, Microsoft has yet to forswear the use of spam themselves. Hotmail, AOL and M$N users will always suffer a barage of adverts.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
If domain administrators could also publish the addresses of their outgoing mail servers, then the receipt of a suspected forgery could trigger a relatively simple, automated verification process. Incoming servers would then be able to confirm whether senders are who they say they are.
So, does this mean all SMTP servers would need some sort of registration or domain name?
Although it would certainly be easy from a business standpoint to demand that all e-mail be sent from clearly acknowledged mail servers (like Hotmail or Yahoo) that can be contacted to enforce anti-spam laws, I don't want my friends' Outlook 2003 to destroy all the e-mail I send just because I run my own sendmail. Surely there are other methods of fighting spam than dominating the entire e-mail infrastructure...
Unless you're Microsoft.
Yes, that is a very good point.
Personally, I think even allowing HTML in email was a bad idea from the very beginning.
Though one thing that might make this better is if the mail program would STRIP your email address from any HTML it finds and replace it with something bogus.
--Won't that be grand? Computers and the programs will start thinking and the people will stop. - Dr. Walter Gibbs
bitte beachten Sie folgende Pressemitteilung der Microsoft Deutschland
GmbH:
Der neue MSN Spam Buster wird kuenftig in ganz Europa eingesetzt Microsoft startet Anti-Spam-Initiative
Jean-Phillipe Courtois, President und CEO von Microsoft EMEA (Europa, Naher Osten und Afrika), hat eine umfassende Initiative vorgestellt, um Kunden vor unverlangten E-Mails zu schuetzen. Damit sollen auch die durch Spam verursachten Produktivitaetseinbussen von geschaetzten 2,5 Milliarden Euro im Jahr reduziert werden. Neben der Entwicklung von Anti-Spam-Technologien sieht die Initiative eine Selbstregulierung der Branche, Anti-Spam-Gesetze sowie die Aufklaerung der Anwender vor.
Im Schulterschluss mit der Wirtschaft und Behoerden will Microsoft mit diesen vier Bereichen dazu beitragen, die Flut an illegalen und
unerwuenschten
E-Mails einzudaemmen. Darueber hinaus will Microsoft die digitale
Integritaet
foerdern, um das Internet sowohl fuer End-Nutzer als auch fuer Unternehmen sicher zu machen.
?Spam ist eines der groessten Probleme, dem der Nutzer heute gegenueber steht. Als einer der grossen Anbieter der Branche fuehlen wir uns
verpflichtet,
eine Loesung dieses Problems herbeizufuehren und dadurch das Vertrauen in das Kommunikationsmittel E-Mail wieder zu staerken?, erklaert
Jean-Phillipe
Courtois, President und CEO von Microsoft EMEA. ?Wir sind ueberzeugt, dass wir dieses Problem nur mit einem koordinierten Ansatz loesen koennen, bei dem Technologie, Selbstbeschraenkung der Branche, starke Gesetzgebung und gezielte Verfolgung illegaler Spammer ineinander greifen.?
Experten schaetzen, dass mehr als die Haelfte des gesamten
E-Mail-Aufkommens
mittlerweile Spam ist. Die dadurch entstehenden Produktivitaetseinbussen in europaeischen Unternehmen verursachen Kosten in Hoehe von mehr als 2,5 Milliarden Euro. ?Mit dieser Initiative und unserer Zusage, den Kampf gegen dieses Problem in den naechsten Jahren fortzufuehren, moechten wir unseren Beitrag dazu leisten, das Internet sicherer und anwenderfreundlicher zu machen?, fuehrt Courtois weiter aus.
Der Verband der deutschen Internetwirtschaft, eco, begruesst die Initiative von Microsoft. Prof. Michael Rotert, Vorstandsvorsitzender des eco
erklaert:
?Spam stellt nicht nur eine ernsthafte Bedrohung fuer die ?Killer-
Application?
E-Mail dar, sondern auch zunehmend fuer andere Dienste, beispielsweise im Bereich des Mobilfunks,.. Der ueberwiegende Anteil der Spammails kommt jedoch von ausserhalb Europas. Von wirtschaftlichen Initiativen, wie der von Microsoft, erhoffen wir uns eine starke Signalwirkung auch fuer
nichteuropaeische
Staaten, Spam zu aechten.?, erklaert Prof. Michael Rotert. Der umfassende Ansatz Microsofts koenne als Vorbild fuer weitere wirtschaftliche
Initiativen
dienen.
Technologische Loesungen
Im Bereich Technologie verfolgt Microsoft das Ziel, seinen Kunden die
besten
derzeit verfuegbaren Loesungen zu bieten, und engagiert sich auf allen Ebenen dafuer, neue und bessere technische Mittel gegen Spam zu finden. Fuer Unternehmen und Kunden hat es sich bereits ausgezahlt, dass Microsoft laufend in Anti-Spam-Technologien investiert: Sie profitieren von den
Innovationen,
die in die neuen Versionen von MSN, MSN Hotmail, Exchange und Outlook
eingegangen
sind.
MSN blockiert zum Beispiel 2,4 Milliarden Spam-Mails pro Tag. Mit
verschiedenen
neuen Technologien sorgt MSN dafuer, dass die E-Mail-Adressen der User nicht in die Haende von Spammern geraten und dass die Menge an
E-Mail-Accounts
reduziert wird, die fuer die Verteilung von Spam genutzt werden koennen:
? Spezielle Technologien unterbinden das Einrichten von Spam-Listen. Ein
Beispiel dafuer ist die Human Interactive Proof (HIP)-Technologie. HIP verhindert die automatische Registrierung neuer E-Mail-Accounts. Seit der Einfuehrung von HIP konnte hier ein Rueckgang von 20 Prozent erzielt werden.
? Leistungsstarke Spam-Filter schuetzen die weltweit 120 Millionen M
I don't have anything to do with M$, yet they have reached out and eliminated one of the major advantages of free software for me, decent mail agants, http and ftp programs. Now all I can do with my cable box is browse as if I were using shitty M$ software. There are so many ways M$ can abuse the anti-spam bandwagon, but they all end up in the same place, M$ being the only "server" of spam and other content.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
Recently released pedophile organizes neighborhood cleanup.
.
I think it might take a little more for Microsoft to turn its image problem around . .
-Peter
At Microsoft, as part of our drive to create a more trustworthy computing environment, we are significantly stepping up our efforts to fight spam and its pollution of the email ecosystem.
Wonderful! I can't wait to reap the benefits of yet another Microsoft promise, like their wildy successful Trustworthy Computing initiative, the results of which can be seen here
Ruby on Rails Screencast
http://popfile.sourceforge.net/
and spam will disappear. It is the BEST baysinian-thingy spam-mail-proxy stuff I've ever used. I'll stop being so technical and just say TRY IT. Setup your proxy, and watch it rip. In over 400 e-mails I've had ZERO false positives (setup the "magnets" when you get started.). And for Windoze users, yes it runs great on Windoze and is EASY to setup.
So do I still hate spam? Sure. Because it's there. Because it costs money and takes resources from the web. But it is NOT a problem in my life and should not be in yours. The last thing we need is POP3 and SMTP to become "Palladium Improved". Let the world know, starting with yourself, that baysani-something-like proxy's work great.
Oh, and if you use hotmail, never log into their crappy site again, while still getting your hotmail e-mail and spam free at that! Use Popfile, a pop3 proxy from www.boolean.ca. that knows how to speak Hotmail! Now you simply have this:
Hotmail -> Popfile -> PopMail -> Inbox.
Poof! Hotmail and every other account you have, all pulled down into one application spam free (yeah, Popfile supports unlimited accounts). Sweet.
Their shutting down MSN!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
All, just remember that the definition of spam is fluid. One person's spam is another's direct marketing.
Don't forget that hanging a 'direct marketer' by their nutsack might be considered "torture" to them but justice to everyone else.
One man's pain is another mans happiness.
That's just a little obvious. Did you bother reading down into the third paragraph? No? I guess that just makes you one of us.
Faggot.
Shit, you're the one who wants him to give you a blowjob. So who's the queer?
"a smart filter can learn from a user's personal preferences to create a unique, anti-spam immune system"
If it's anti-spam immune then I assume this means microsoft will be pouring only _its_ spam into your inbox?
How comes that I had 10 Microsoft Security patches in my inbox :-)
Comment removed based on user account deletion
I've had to start blocking MSN/Hotmail SMTP servers because of the amount of spam I'm getting. I typically send back a 550 error with a string of text that includes a URL to a web form on my site so that if I block a family member, they'll be able to figure out what's going on.
But guess what? MSN/Hotmail does not pass the errors back to the sender. All they do is give them a message saying that their email didn't go through. No 550, no error string. What's the point of the SMTP protocol and error messages if they won't use them? Are they doing this to make it harder to block junk email from MSN/Hotmai
At Microsoft, we're strongly committed to the goal of ending today's spam epidemic [as long as we make millions in the process].
Having a bookmark to Google does not make you an expert on everything.
This is present in Outlook 2003. *By default* images aren't downloaded from html mail. You are presented with a dialog explaining how it can be bad, then allows you to make the decision...
Why can't we have something in place that will keep track of all email sent and charge the users a nominal fee (1 cent) for each email sent. The small fee because even if you send a lot of email it still won't break your back. Charged to the system the email orginated from and then onto the user.
I think this would help notify people running open relays (What is the bill for $1,000?!?!).
And I think it would probably weed out most of the spam.
Of course the problem would be enforcement, and if they keep a tally of who sent the email what other information they are keeping.
And then the bigger question of what to do with the money.
Just an idea.
its about time the industry has come forward to put pressure on lawmakers to put the smack down on spammers. I think the ADV: subject line is completely logical in that respect.
Sure it sucks, but at least be accurate.
One line blog. I hear that they're called Twitters now.
While it's a good piece I think it could have used some editing for brevity.
OK ban spam and direct marketing. People dont want either generaly speaking. It's one thing if a sales person sends me an email about some new product offering thats keeping me in the loop it's a different thing when it's an automated sender from some PR department. Make email like faxes just say no to anything automated that wasent SPECIFICALY requested like the local Deli's lunch specials. Spam is as much trougth in advertising and working against automation.
No sir I dont like it.
Microsoft is a business - they do things to make money - or to save money. Right now they waste tons of money and time on spam fighting. One of Microsoft's "pluses" to their email systems is that it is "spam-proof". This of course appeals more to the everyday user and gives them a public friendly image.
While what they are doing may be in part motivated by the community (I am happy that they are doing something about it), but you can promise yourself that they will recieve something from it.
Product activation does not bug "Joe Smoe" who buys his software at Wal-mart that much, hence they keep it as the benifets are worth more than the minuses.
Very few businesses make money listening to everything the public wants - as you cannot please everyone. Product Activation was simply a way to fight piracy and honestly, the one to two minutes of my time it takes to activate something I bought doesn't bug me that much. The people that created those products spent a lot of time making them and have the moral right to know that they are not being stolen from them... (IMO)
Anyhow - I dunno, but I doubt that Bill Gates is community motivated here...
There is always a frontier where there is an open and willing mind
This is an education problem, not a spam problem. This is why good, confirmed opt-in mailing list techniques are an absolute MUST for anyone sending this sort of email. (Speaking as a user, not an admin, and having never run a mailing list myself.) If people are signing up for email, and calling it spam, then they're nitwits.
I think there is the danger of a serious "definition creep" in the spam fight in the near future. It's important that people be educated that this sort of thing is NOT spam. Television ads are not spam. Spam complaints are not spam. Pop up windows for a website you voluntarily visited are not spam. (I'll make a concession that the increasing problem of commercial IM and chatroom advertising should probably fall under the "spam" umbrella.) Even penis enlargement techniques, debt refinancing, and offers from the wives of dead Nigerian dictators are not spam, if you signed up for them.
The spammers (and, to a lesser extent, the DMA) want to redefine spam as something they don't do. It is important that this not be allowed or the fight will have been lost.
It's interesting that the technique they describe as adaptive machine learning which is being developed at Microsoft Research, sounds pretty much like what Mozilla is trying to achieve. MS may get more sophisticated, which wouldn't be bad. I've managed to train my Mozilla to be pretty darn accurate with the mail it receives, but it could use some competition and improvement.
For those of you who have no idea what I'm talking about, the general idea is that as you recieve mail, you flag it as spam or not spam. By examining the patterns that occur within legit emails and bogus emails, the machine gets better at guessing which emails are good and which are bad. For me, some of the filters must be easy for it. Every email I get with the word "porn" in it is spam. However, unlike many other people, I get lots of email with the word "debt" which is legitimate. So, it is built based on the profile of email I recieve. I would mention though, that most of the "get out of debt" emails I recieve are nicely filtered out based on some other criteria the program has figured out.
If you haven't tried a recent mozilla for mail, it's a pretty good program with a fun solution to spam. Give it a shot.
Microsoft is in a somewhat unique position for fighting spam. While many of us get tons of spam every day, and can come up with our own bayesian filters and whatnot, Microsoft's control of hotmail probably gives them an amazing ability to build a huge spam database. The article says they block 2.4 BILLION spams in 1 day from MSN. If they are seriously going to start on machine learning techniques and whatnot, this is an amazing resource for them to tap into.
Also, as a huge corporation with mammoth resources, and access to all of that incoming spam, they have the ability to set up a real time blocking list that could be incredibly effective due to integrating it with their existing email software (server and client). I'm not sure there is another company in this position. (Maybe AOL or something, to a degree) In any case, it seems like this could be a very good thing.
Activating Windows XP Pro or Office XP Pro takes less than 10 seconds.
Click on the register now icon in systray or on the start menu. Activate. "Activate now online" or something to that likes. Bam your done.
Its literally less than 20 seconds at most if you have the mouse on the slowest pointer speed. Get over it.
Kind of a shame. The COM automation interface to Outlook is very powerful, but it requires a load of a huge program to leave a postit to yourself.
One line blog. I hear that they're called Twitters now.
Did you notice that this was an early sales pitch for "Outlook 2003"? If you buy it ... it will solve your problems with Spam.
After all, we all have to buy something next year to keep sales flow at a suitable level.
Now that Bill has solved the security problems in his products, he is moving on to spam. Way to go!
GO MS!!! Go to a distant planet where you can't bother us anymore!
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Listening to the user community and deciding to help it by fighting a nuisance like spam is great...
This may one of the few things I ever wish M$ luck with. However, I really have to wonder if it will be anymore effective than his various campaigns to stomp out software bugs in M$ products. Afterall, those campaigns have worked <sarcasm>so well</sarcasm>.
I recently created a new hotmail account with a name that would not be found using any dictionary search. I selected _every_ privacy option I could find. Nobody but me and hotmail knew of the new account.
Within 6 hours I started to receive spam.
Hotmail _must_ be leaking registration information from somewhere.
Does anyone know if Earthlink has actually rolled out it's challenge/response system yet? I'm curious to know how well it is/isn't working...
Don't forget the generalization of the term spam to the unwanted interruptions from the scum we call "telemarketers".
Their calls fit the definition of (1) unsolicited and (3) commercial or bulk in nature. They are incredibly annoying because the telemarketers presume your time is theirs to take at will, and they won't take a polite "no" for an answer. (On the other hand, the telemarketers don't hesitate to have auto-dialers listen for a voice, so they can avoid wasting THEIR "precious" time until you speak.)
From what I can tell, the work that ressemble what is described here has been done by Danisch
...and not once did I see any relation with work done at Microsoft.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
A certain very large ISP used to play a game where, by default, you permitted all marketing. You could go to a specific screen on the service and opt out. The really cute part was that once a year (or so), they'd reset your preferences, for no apparent reason other than to make marketing targets out of people who had asked to be left alone.
How does Bill square his statements with those of his lobbyists who are busy at work to dilute California anti-spam bills in the hopper?
Google and google-groups for Listbuilder and Bcentral.
Microsoft send spam and then lie about it.
I sysadmin a network that has a few hundred various machines, many of which are XP. They are very easy to activate.
I don't know what attitude your talking about but please enlighten me? The only problem I could see is if someone does not legally have a license to the copyright material (copyright violation not theft) they have on their computers. Upgrades? I've performed many on our machines and rarely do they request reactivation unless I change a -crapload- of stuff... motherboard and CPU included in which case its not the same computer anymore really. Transfering license from one machine to another with an OEM copy? Ok thats a problem maybe in the legal sense as your not suppose to. But even employees at my work switch XP Pro from one machine to the next and reactivate with NO problem whatsoever. There is no little Bill Gates troll that pops up and says "MORE MONEY BIZNITCH" or something...really... its not hampered anyone from activating it. And some of these people have put it on like four machines!
So please, to me as a sysadmin of around 350 boxes, please tell me how it is a bad thing? It has not fscked with our productivity at ALL yet people are still insisting that it does and will....
Very good point. I register products to get recall notices, but I won't give out my email address. Spam my mailbox, but not my inbox.
Of course, if they would say "check here to only get non-sales information about the product you our registering" I'd gladly give out my email to save them postage sending me recall info.
Fortunately there's Ad-Aware that helps to remove most of the spyware. It's usually the first thing I use when I have to 'fix' someone's windows pc.
Yeah... like Magneto.
Laws are for people with no friends.
MS Could make their software fight spam better by adding native support for the following two items:
1- Support for DNSBL/RBL style blocklists like ordb and spews in exchange 2000/ make a free addin for exchange 5.5
2- The equiv. of the BIND "Generate" directive to make it so that the MS DNS server can be used for blocklists.
--
Time is on my side
Sure, unless the activation servers are down.
Or, until you buy a new computer and you have to call the 800 number and waste 10 minutes of your life. Oh, and that doesn't work if the activation servers are down too.
There is no reason I should have to beg permission to be allowed to use a legally purchased product. There is no reason that the manufacturer should be able to determine, AFTER the sale, what I personally do with that product. There is no reason that the doctrine of first sale should not apply to software, other than this 'because we can get away with it' garbage.
is competition good, or is duplication of effort bad?
I haven't used Popfile, but I'm generally quite sceptical about Bayesian filtering. I tried out the Bayesian filtering system of Mozilla, it needed an awful lot of mails for training until it had somehow acceptable results, and even then, it had quite a lot of false positives. Maybe, I expect too much. I expect that an e-mail in a language the filtering system has not seen before will not be misrecognized as spam, but invariably, some of the first mails in a language not seen before were labeled as spam.
I think there is a more fundamental problem with Bayesian filtering. Of course, you can get very high percentages with them, but that doesn't mean so much. Quantitatively, most e-mails we usually receive follow certain patterns (mails from mailing lists on a certain subjects, in general mails on subjects we often deal with), and it's quite easy for Bayesian filters to learn their characteristics. However, I think, as a rule, unusual messages are more important than those that are very similar to thousands of others (rare and unexpected events have more informational value), and it's just these unusual mails that are more likely to end up as false positives. So, the nice percentages can be quite misleading.
Maybe, I'm too radical here, for people who only rely on receiving mails in few languages for which the Bayesian system soon has enough samples, their performance isn't that bad. But I strongly dislike the principle underlying Bayesian filters: "What conforms to the rest is good, what is unusual is suspicious."
An example to illustrate what I mean (it's not very realistic, of course): Person A daily receives e-mails from people of the opposite sex wanting a date. So, every new mail of that category are safe. However, A does not have a job and always waits in vain for e-mail with job offers. When finally one such mail arrives, it goes into the spam folder and is overlooked because it doesn't have the characteristics of the legitimate mails A usually receives (and has some distant similarity with work-at-home and MMF spam).
B daily receives e-mails with great job offerings and makes an unusual career. So, every new mail of that category is safe. However, B is lonely in private life and waits in vain for a date proposal. When finally one such mail arrives, it's put into the spam folder and overlooked because it doesn't have the characteristics of the legitimate mails B usually receives (and has some distant similarity with spam advertising dating sites and telephone numbers).
Both A and B have very low rates of false positives, so the Bayesian filters are working well...
I prefer systems that check for typical spam characteristics and mail source (Spamassassin, Blacklists), in my experience, they aren't less efficient than these hyped Bayesian filters, but in contrast to them, they do not promote conformity against diversity. Maybe, Bayesian criteria are useful as an add-on, but I would never want to base the decision whether something is spam solely on them. What should I do when Bayesian filtering becomes popular, thresholds are set lower and lower because of the rising spam problem and I want to write someone a message? Should I try to guess which wordings conform better to the usual correspondence of the person I write to - otherwise there's the risk that the message won't be seen?
That would already be total capitulation, spam would have defeated e-mail.
If you did your homework, you would realize that exchange 2003 has support for those block lists..
~GoAT~
I love how Bill toots his own horn.
Like almost everyone, I receive a lot of spam every day, much of it offering to help me get out of debt or get rich quick. It's ridiculous.
Hey Bill, pass me a billion and we can share the joke!
As an individual, all the MS products that I've tried had a 30 day activation window. As long as you don't wait til the last minute, you have plenty of time to work around the temporary glitches that might occur.
And large corporations wouldn't be effected as Microsofts Select program includes utilities for large key deployment and activation (without user intervention.)
Comment removed based on user account deletion
> Bam your done.
Why would I want to bam my done?
WHY OH WHY would anyone seriously consider following any suggestions from criminals? There should be absolutely NO DOUBT that any solution that Microsoft proposes to "end spam" will involve Microsoft extending their control into areas they have no current rights to control.
is this true? why was (or still is?) hotmail still so vulnerable to spams? there are lots of junks to every one useful mail.
In the new accounts I read, he decried spam but wants to devise how to let "legitimate" e-mail through.
This sounds like trying to have it both ways.
"Stamp out them 'other' spammers and let my guys through."
The technology that lets only "legitimate" e-mail through is a Sisyphisian burden. Yes, I know all about opt-in and the rest of it, but there's a lot of ways the evil ones can get through, especially if MS places a skeleton key into the design.
Skipjack anyone?
exchanges (difficult I know).
If the greater Internet community doesn't take definitive action soon, the concern is that Microsoft or similar will come up with a fix that they could potentially push as a "standard" that they control.
People are hungry for a real, fundamental fix to the spam problem, not just "smart" filters.
Don't let Microsoft lead the way..
Does this mean that all that money I have spent to have a 21" Manhood was for nothing?
Drat.
DISCLAIMER:
I don't believe what I write, and neither should you.
There's a famous quote from former Australian Prime Minister Bob Hawke (no relation to Microsoft Bob) suggesting that by 1990 no Australian child would live in poverty1, presumably as a result of his policies although I'm not sure of that and can't site anything aftera brief seach. At the time he left stage with tears welled up in his eyes, but it attracted a lot of criticism in the same way as most delusional vapourware (including Gates' flowery promise here).
1 http://www.abc.net.au/am/s36058.htm
Believe with me, my saplings.
I'm still waiting to make millions of dollars from the Microsoft email tracking system... I want that trip to Disney.
:)
They'll have to make something that actually works!
The GEEK shall inherit the earth...
This is offtopic, but it's a reply to the parent's views about charity.
When I was young and impressionable (and I gave a s*it) I used to give money to charity. The United Way, Save the Children etc.
I also used to give money to panhandlers if they had the balls to come up to me and ask.
But that all changed one evening in 1987. I was riding home on the Staten Island Ferry and a big dude, who I've contributed to before came to me and asked for a handout. He said he was hungry. The usual speech. But what I noticed that totally pissed me off was that he had 2 big cans of Budweiser in his 'shopping cart'.
So I cut him off, telling him that he has money for beer, he doesn't need my money.
From that day on the only charity I've ever contributed to is 'Save Selfish Me'.
Huh?
I believe Microsoft is largely to blame for this with Internet Explorer. Many users have default settings that do not prompt or reject downloads of unsigned ActiveX objects. So Gator slips right in. And they don't have prompt/reject set for running unsigned scripts.
Have you ever tried surfing the web using IE with Active X set to prompt? Pretty much every banner add seems to use Active X for something or other. It's scary...
Vino, gyno, and techno -Bruce Sterling
But 1 out of 20 piece of SPAM that I get originates from MS bCentral. It would be nice if companies that claim to be fighting SPAM recognize that even if they label the email they send as "targetted opt-in email" (where "opt-in" mean they include a way to opt-out) that it is still Unsolicated Commerical Email (UCE). I'm getting sick of bCentral's implied opt-in due to lack of opt-out notification. All legit mailing-lists require a responce which includes random string before considing the email address subscribed/opt-in.
Right. Three activities and increased user vigilance, as opposed to a simple "no HTML" option. Way to miss the point, genius.
This option is only available in OEv6 SP1...
Ever notice how you can open a brand new hotmail account and then 3 days later you have a nice email telling you how to enlarge your @#$#@$. Get rid of the damn mail service, they may not be ones causing it... but its sure a hell of a target....and a waste of bandwidth.
From what he says in the article, it seems most of his anti-spam focus is on the MUA side. What he does say about stopping spam at the source relies mainly on government legislation (e.g. "senders would have to insert an "ADV:" label") which would do nothing to actually stop spam. He doesn't seem to understand that to really make a dent in the problem is going to take a global concerted effort on the part of all MTA administrators -- ISP's, network providers, hub systems, and even all unix newbies who run mail servers whether they know what they're doing or not.
Recived from: weownzjuu.microsoft.com
Mail Error: Certificate presented by your User Agent is not issued by Microsoft.
And you can b suree that the spm you *do* receive is once-in-a-lifetime marketing opportunities from companies able to pony up the dough to whoever issues the certs.
Xix.
"Everything is adjustable, provided you have the right tools"
Personally, I think even allowing HTML in email was a bad idea from the very beginning.
I used to think that way, but I have come to appreciate the formatting that HTML allows. It can really increase the legibility of a complex e-mail.
What was a mistake was to allow the use of any HTML that loads from external sites. All HTML should have been self-contained in the e-mail, including any images.
The biggest, and stupidest, mistake was to allow scripts to be processed by e-mail. What is Microsoft thinking when they won't let you share your "Program Files" directory over a network but will allow some kid in Panama to download and execute viruses via an e-mail?
Indeed... but wouldn't it be nice to not have to fix their machine in the first place? :)
I'd rather be educating them on how to use it than cleaning up poop.
.sigs are for post^Hers.
This should read: "Microsoft is committed to solving the spam problem. Our new enhancments to the Internet mail protocols, MS-SMTP, will eliminate spam. (While gradually making 90% of Internet e-mail servers based on propritary "decommodified" protocols which will require Microsoft products to be transmitted, received, and relayed properly.)"
Next version of Office, my friend.
k /Outlook2K3_Features.asp
http://www.microsoft.com/exchange/techinfo/outloo
# Advanced antispam filters
Let your antispam filters learn from experience. This feature uses keywords and patterns (for example, mail sent at an unusual time of day) automatically derived from examples of spam and normal mail to produce a score. By using this score, all suspected spam can be moved to a special e-mail folder. Both positive and negative scores are used when evaluating the likelihood that a message is spam. You can customize how Outlook handles this e-mail, whether it is setting your filters to low, high, or exclusive, or by turning it off completely. The choice is yours.
# Safe and Block lists
Get additional spam control by choosing to only receive e-mail from individuals already set up in your address book, from specific e-mail addresses, or from designated domains.
# External HTML blocking
By blocking external HTML by default in Outlook 2003, you can stop spammers from using Web links to sneakily verify recipients' e-mail addresses as active. You can unblock HTML on a per-message basis or disable it completely.
A speech...
The way they describe their filters "adapting" and "ultimately up to the users preferences" makes it sound like Mozilla's "Junk Mail" feature. I think the people in the Microsoft Research dept just sit around and browse the web with Mozilla all day.
"charity" (with all the negative baggage that implies)
What I find sad is the acceptance, and validity, of this statement in today's society. When exactly did charity become a negative thing?
Sure I'm paranoid, but am I paranoid enough?
Microsoft has already done this with Outlook 2003 (Office 11 now in Beta) and in hotmail. Now you can easily block images in HTML email with both of them. And like others suggested if you want to read it as plain text then such an option has existed since a long time.
As a side note: The half-life of these initiatives seem to be just under a year, which matches closely the press and public's attention span.
So in other words, you can safely ignore this announcement and continue maintenance of whatever spam filter you are currently using.
It won't be as bad as you fear or as good as you hope, but it will take twice as long as your plan.
---- It won't be as bad as you fear or as good as you hope, but it will take twice as long as you plan.
Do you mean "corporate masters", or do you mean "capitalist masters"? Marx would like to know. Either way I am quite surprised that your post made it past the local delegation of Libertarian party idea moderators. (it's fun to tease anyhow, isn't it? :)
That aside, it seems rather too optimistic to expect a group of people, the majority of whom seem not even to understand the blatant ethical underpinnings of the GNU GPL, to accept the notion that we have ethical obligations to both the well-being and advancement of all members of society, and to defend each of them from private individuals and corporate entities who wish to exploit these people as resources in order to elevate themselves above their peers.
How is it, I wonder, that a user of Free Software (as insignificant and silly as it may seem to many people) has no care for or interest in these ideals?
"When exactly did charity become a negative thing?"
When peace became a dirty word. I think it was right around the first gulf war of Bush Sr.
War is necrophilia.
All, just remember that the definition of spam is fluid. One person's spam is another's direct marketing.
No. The commonly-accepted definion of spam is (1) unsolicited (2) email that is (3) either commercial or bulk in nature. (1), (2), and (3) must all be present for something to be spam.
Why aren't forged headers part of that definition? My impression is that the vast majority of spam has forged headers, and that if we could do away with forged headers, the spam problem would go away because thousands of users would just DOS anyone who attempted to spam them.
OK, spam is a nuisance. But how much worse is allowing corporations to make judgments about what messages you should read based on their content?
We're taking for granted that the language, nature of the words, senders, content of the pictures, etc. of an increasing part of our private communication should be monitored, analyzed and pattern matched, and cheering this surveillance effort on. At Slashdot!
I'm all for stopping spam, but I'd sooner decide what I want to read myself. The Hotmail monopoly on email for the masses spooks me out, especially when they make actions like this a matter of course. People treat it as a utility like the postal service, but they don't see how massively more invasive it is. Would they agree to have all their private mail opened, read and checked in case some of it was junk mail?
Note too that Microsoft limits the number of email addresses you can block, and if you get a spam from abc@def.ghi.com they give you the opportunity to block abc@def.ghi.com or all mail from def.ghi.com but do not give you any chance to block wverything from ghi.com. This shows that Microsoft have either never looked at the email addresses spammers use or are in league with them. The end result's the same, it is pretty impossible for Hotmail users to block spam using Hotmail's so-called antispam features.
Phil
with MS advertisements ;-)
-SLK
With that kind of depressive negative attitude I can only suggest that you go and off yourself right now. At least then you'll be increasing the average happiness of humankind.
Pinky: "What are we going to do tomorrow night Brain?"
Brain: "I would tell you Pinky but this 120 char limi
Correction. One persons direct marketing is several million peoples spam.
For example, I have seen people that have signed-up for offers from a company (I saw them do it) turn around and start complaining that they are being spammed... even if I set up a relationship and asked for it - then it is spam.
I'm sorry, there is no cure for stupidity.
While I hate spam as much as the next guy, why does there seem to be so much more effort toward dealing with it over other forced marketing such as junk mail or telemarketers? I realize that some states and soon the fed will have telemarketer no call lists, but it still seems that spam is more hated and worked against? What is it about spam that is so much worse than other advertising/marketing?
Hoyty
Yeah, I say this is just a ploy trying to make it seem like he's cleaning up his act. Or something.
for yahoo! mail, you can use http://yahoopops.sourceforge.net/
Comment removed based on user account deletion
It doesn't sound very credible that this chap BBC report is more prolific and irritating than Mr Ralsky has been reported to be. Or is the previously acknowleged king of spam in MS' sights as well?
So friggin easy!
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
Why are there people that trust conviced monopoly abusers?
Lets wait to hear your thanks when MS introduces successfully Palladium with the lame excuse of blocking spam.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
I use Spybot's Search & Destroy instead of Adaware, but the story's pretty much the same. I do make sure that whoever's machine it is watches, and I tell them to run it at least once a week.
jred
I'm not a mechanic but I play one in my garage...
That's the second Teusday of next week, right?
Indeed this is the ugly side of full capitalism and no doubt you could draw a parallel between what you said and the lack of a visible political left wing in America (because the L wing has been stigmatised to such an extent with communism being worse than being a devil worshipper).
Conversion Rate Optimisation French / English consultant
On my hotmail account, the spam filter can delete spam immediately, or save it to the "junkmail" folder.
Why isn't it possible to bounce the junkmail that is identified by the spam filter? Then the spam sending program will think the email address doesn't exist and the addres might be taken from the address list of the spammer, stopping further spam.