Slashdot Mirror
Forward This Article And Get Paid $203.15
Iphtashu Fitz writes "We've all seen it. The e-mail forwarded to us from a friend who got it from a coworker whose sister's cousin's roommate's great aunt knows somebody at Microsoft. The one from Bill Gates himself offering you cash to forward the e-mail to others in order to test out their new e-mail tracking system. If you haven't received that one you've undoubtedly gotten other e-mail hoaxes offering anything from gift certificates to free computers to free airline tickets. How do these sorts of hoaxes start and who starts them? Well Jonathon Keats at Wired Magazine decided to track down the origin of the Bill Gates e-mail tracking hoax. After a few dead ends he finally located then-student Bryan Mack, who created the hoax on November 18, 1997 while at the University of Houston. In Mack's own words: 'It was just a joke between a couple friends' that eventually got out of hand. One of his buddies had gotten a make-money-fast spam and Mack said 'I can come up with something better than that.' Three minutes later, Bill Gates' email-tracing program was born. At first he just sent it to a few friends, but those friends sent it to other friends (and so on), and it didn't take long for the e-mail to transform from a joke to a full-fledged hoax."
Why do I even subscribe to Wired anymore, I can get the whole magazine in 2 weeks worth of articles on Slashdot, with full discussions...
Oh wait I know why, the pretty colors of the magazine!!!
On the other hand: back in the day we got email hoaxes stating there was a new virus that could be triggered by just opening the email. Back then we laughed with those pranks because we knew it was impossible. I kept laughing, until the day it really happened. Of course it didn't concern me because I read my email with pine, but I wasn't all too happy of that evolution... What I thought to be impossible had suddenly become a reality.
Ahhh...the great dumpster continuum. Many a free computer will be found there. -- sowth (748135)
I finally know the name of the man I've wanted to kill for the past 7 years.
It's all fun and games until?
Can this wired magazine article survive a slashdotting? Tune in next week!
Craig Steffen
http://www.craigsteffen.net
You mean it doesn't work!?!? I've been forwarding those dang things for 7 years now trying to make an honest buck, and you tell me now!
Seriously, do the people who fall for this even think to consider the ramifications of their e-mail being tracked by Microsoft in the first place? That was a rhetorical question, of course - anyone stupid enough to go for this crap isn't smart enough to know he has civil rights, much less care about whether it's the government or a big corporation taking them away.
So I should expect my check in the mail soon?
This color ends in 'urple.'
"Jon Katz isn't very sneaky. What an obvious pseudonym!"
"Also, the author of that Wired article is an idiot."
(-1, Redundant)
This is actually a very well written Wired article. It's interesting to note that it only took him a little bit of research (or so it seems by the article) to find this guy. All he had to do was find the original hoax email, and the guys name was the first on the list! This is what started it all, and every single revision one could think of. It went from Email, to Instant Messaging, people have even started recieving them on their SMS-enabled phones as well. It's amazing to think that there are actually people who still believe this stuff... and it still continues on...amazing.. well atleast amusing to say the least.
Hmmm.
If Bill isn't going to be sending me any money, I guess I'll have to send all my friends emails that they won't get any money either. But I do know this Nigerian General..... Maybe they'd be interested in that.
I usually tell whoever forwarded this to me (as it's usually someone who knows me) that if they keep doing it I'll be forced to block all mail from them. Then they get pissed off. It's like hello, you're being rude! Have some freaking manners already. If people want to forward this stuff to idiots, then fine, but I find it insulting when people who know me think I'd either fall for this lame crap, or actually WANT any of it.
Introducing the new Occam Fusion! Now with sqrt(-1) fewer blades!
What? Are you telling me I won't get any money from Bill Gates!
All those thousands of mails I forwarded for nothing?
This can not be true!
Ash nazg durbatulûk, ash nazg gimbatul
ash nazg thrakatulûk, agh burzum-ishi krimpatul.
These things start off as a joke but they quickly seem to get out of hand. Just today I got a message from someone who I thought was intelligent. She sent the "yahoo will close your account if you don't forward this lengthy message" IM. This seriously gets under my skin as I continually try to convince people that it is a hoax. :'( My friends don't believe me and I need a hug cause I think I'm having a nervous breakdown.
Respond to this post and get cash (in the form of a Slashdot Subscription)!
CmdrTaco and Hemos want to test out the latest revision of Slashcode and they need your help. For a limited time only (today) and on a limited number of threads (this post) Slashdot is implementing a post tracking system whereby each person who replies will receive a cash payment (converted into a Slashdot subscription! Hurray!) based on the number of replies posted to your comment. The goal is to stress test how deeply nested responses can be made.
What are you waiting for? Reply now.
This post is not associated in anyway with Slashdot. It is merely a poor representation of sarcasm, or irony, or a metaphor about how a beatiful woman is like a fine piece of jade... or something... You won't actually get a subscription to Slashdot and I might lose mine.
--
Was it the sheep climbing onto the altar, or the cattle lowing to be slain,
or the Son of God hanging dead and bloodied on a cross that told me this was a world condemned, but loved and bought with blood.
Not to mention that being on a Mac does not disqualify him from recieving the reward money for forwarding his messages. Bill told me so in his last email.
Hrrm... I usually just sign my name.
E-mail scams! Wait till my friend from Nigeria hears about this!
1st person to not received it since 97...
am i already late or still on time?
How do we know *he* was the one to start it?
I never received much spam until that one day, someone I had emailed ONCE and LONG AGO, who obviously put me in her list of contacts (automatically or not), decided to forward a fake AMBER alert to the hundreds of people in her list, me being one.
I still rue the day I emailed her.
Hoaxes are not just powerful at getting a message across, but they can be amazingly powerful for spammers. Imagine spammers creating hoaxes that go out to 1,000,000 email addresses. Assuming 1% goes through and that each one of those people forwards to another 20 people will allow spammers to distribute a link to some product for free after the first 1,000,000. Also, this will take the legal strain off of the spammers themselves?
Are any companies currently doing this?
GroupShares Inc. - A Free and Interactive Stock Market Community
-------
artlu.net
This site has been both Slashdotted and Farked. I think we need to go inform the IT people at Wired that we offer them our condolences on the loss of their servers. Then again, they probably already know all about the problems, what with that burning smell...
Maybe they could sell the blackened chunks of silicon that used to be their servers on eBay, make back some of the loss.
There is no mod option "-1: Disagree" for a reason. "Overrated" is not an acceptable substitute. Post something instead.
As you can imagine it did our credibility no good whatsoever.
It is not just ignorant housewives and naive schoolkids who fall for these hoaxes...
Web Sig: Eddy Currents
I tell everyone, before they forward any of that crap, or virtually anything they deem worthy of sharing, they should first check it against the Urban Legends Reference Pages.
free wired subscription (as seen on slickdeals.net).
Yes, like the Jim Caveziel pseudonym of Jesus Christ , i wonder how such intelligent people choose so obvious aliases :)
Of course it didn't concern me because I read my email with pine
Pine Message/External-Body Type Attribute Buffer Overflow Vulnerability [Sep 10, 2003]
Pine From: Field Buffer Overflow Vulnerability [Sep 23, 2000]
Pine 4.x Remote Command Execution Vulnerability [Jun 28, 1999]
it's in my head
I hate those hoax warnings, but this one is important! Send this
> > warning to everyone on your e-mail list!
> >
> > If someone comes to your front door saying they are conducting a survey
> > and asks you to take your clothes off, do not do it! This is a scam;
> > they only want to see you naked.
> >
> > I wish I'd gotten this yesterday. I feel so stupid and cheap now....
Someone take him outside and give him a kicking for the irritation he caused.
Do not try to read the dupe, thats impossible. Instead, only try to realize the truth
What truth?
There is no dupe
'It was just a joke between a couple friends''
Because of that travesty of a joke, the everyone in the world is getting this stuff their e-mail (along with the other huge amounts of spam). Bryan Mack ought to give an appology to the world. And NOT in the form of an e-mail! After all, just look at what happened to his "joke".
Red Bull gave me wings and I flew into the ceiling fan.
I can remember recieving this on Usenet! Long before 1997. Circa 1992 or so. I think they got the wrong guy. He may have started one, but the incarnation of this joke was FAR earlier.
SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
As with spam and scams and mail virus, this guy is not in some sort of danger for starting a mail hoax? If not, er... should be?
Has anyone ever used these exploits to write a (Unix) virus?
Ahhh...the great dumpster continuum. Many a free computer will be found there. -- sowth (748135)
Raise your hand if you felt a glimmer of hope upon reading the headline... [sigh]
Not to mention the fact that most people don't understand that when you forward to a bunch of people (unless you use bcc), your email, along with everybody elses gets attached to that email. That email is then forwarded from person to person, collecting addresses...when finally it ends up at a spammer. Hm...wonder what they'd do with 1500 email addresses??
...as the virus hoax forwards that have ignorant people deleting semi-vital Windows files that they are told are "steeling you're CREEDIT CARD NUMBERS!!!!!!!"
I want my subscription, please reply to my post.
really, I mean jdbmgr.exe anyone? Look for the bear!!!
:)
And who would be stupid enough to believe a software company would make executables launch from within the email, or for that matter the header? What kind of buffoon software would ever do that...???
A computer once beat me at chess, but it was no match for me at kick boxing. Emo Philips
I ended up prosecuting a guy who kept sending out the $5 pyramid scheme emails. He pissed too many people off with his spam. Needless to say, he has quit this profession. BTW, he did not make very much money off of it. Yeah I know, DUMB CROOK. Those are the only ones we catch.
Welcome to the future. Back in the '40s, Heinlein wrote Space Cadet. On the first page, a phone rings while hanging from the hero's belt. As he answers the call, he's watching a monorail arrive. Futuristic then, commonplace today. We have seen the future, and it is now!
Good, inexpensive web hosting
I'd use it to hunt down and kill all the people who forward me this crap.
I am Sartre of the Borg. Existence is futile.
Can someone track down the dude that sends me viruses via e-mail with cute names like txt.exe? It's really adorable.
"I didn't get this rich by writing a lot of checks"
A simple rule I teach all my friends/family/users:
If an e-mail asks you to forward it to anyone: Don't.
They're like human-propigated computer virii, written by social engineers who don't know how to program.
This sig has been enciphered with a one-time pad. It could say almost anything.
I have gotten the Gates email dozens of times - mainly each time my friends/family join the 'Net gen. I even have a canned reply email (from the 2nd time I got one) for these newbies explaining why these companies would not do this. What I have noticed in the last couple years is the proliferation of the 'echain', where I must send 1 to at least 10. I do forward some of these if they are a nice message or would hurt the original sender if I did not send them back (I know - WUSS), but I refuse to clog the wires with the "Fwd to at least 10 people or you'll DIE" letters.
When they can r00t my QVT-102 terminal, I'll be impressed! (Especially since it's in the box in the basement right now.)
One line blog. I hear that they're called Twitters now.
admittedly, I temporarily filtered all email from my mother for this very reason. Once she promised to stop sending me crap, I removed the filter, and all was well.
Gentlemen, you can't fight in here! This is the War Room!
you are an idiot, or have 0 sense of humor, or a complete snob. pick your favourite!
Or not..
"Hmm. I am to metaphor cheese as metaphor cheese is to transitive verb crackers!"
"History doesn't repeat itself, but it does rhyme." Mark Twain
It was just a joke between a couple friends' that eventually got out of hand.
That's what you think.
All of your supposedly rational analysis cannot sway my faith in the sacred writ. "And it will come to pass that Gates shall recognize his pre-ordained duty to greatness and cut checks to the faithful forwarders."
There's even a prophetic passage in the original email alluding to a naysayer arising and ultimately meeting an untimely demise on a skateboard passing through a flock of pigeons.
"Provided by the management for your protection."
When this guy got the email, he sent an email to everyone previous asking if they had received any money.
When I used to get this email, I'd send an email to everyone previous asking them to not send stupid emails to every person in their address book. Usually I accompany it with:
- a brief explanation as to why it's stupid (the AOL/Intel/MS merger being unlikely)
- why there's no way they will get any money (MS is a business, not a charity)
- some basic math (do the financial return through three iterations - you, the guy who sent it to you, and the guy who sent it to him - assuming that you each sent it to precisely 20 people, then the guy who sent it to the guy who sent it to you will gain over $2-million)
- a request that they don't jam up the internet with more spam. The more people who send stupid emails, the more stupid emails in people's inbox, and the more traffic travelling through the mailservers.
- a caution about mass forwarding other people's email addresses ( if you hit forward, then everyone you forward it to gets my email address, unless you were smart enough to BCC it - that's likely hundreds or thousands of people that now have my email address... where before the number was less than a hundred)
Usually, I am able to send this 'educational' email to more than a hundred people at a time (due to everyone forwarding without using bcc).
I try to keep the tone stern, but not insulting. The idea is to make people feel stupid for being a part of the chain letter, not to insult them.
The end result: I don't get this email anymore.
In fact, I get less junk mail in general, and so do the people one iteration before me. By making the people who send me junk mail feel stupid for sending it, I've made them stop sending it.
What about Jessica Mydek and her dying wish to clog as many email servers as she could before cancer takes her? Won't you help? (P.S. Try saying her name three times fast.)
Has anyone ever used these exploits to write a (Unix) virus?
I'm not sure about Pine, but Yes, mailer exploits did lead to a UNIX worm.
Which one would that be? As far as I know, all the email viruses required the user to actually open the attachment.
A site with a javascript automathic hoax - text generator.
I rememeber putting together the most absurd hoax I could, translate it back and forth from English to other languages in babelfish, prefixing each line with a random number of "> > >" pasting it on my e-mail program, and sending it to a jokes list.
It got the "joke of the week" mention on the list quite easily.
-><- no
The article states that Brian Mack, the creator of the hoax, was a student at Iowa State University, not the University of Houston. It was a UH student that was the first reciepient. Mind, there's a big difference between the two schools. Having gone from Houston to points farther north than Ames on I-35 (stopping there for lunch, as that's normally the time I get to Ames), I should know. However, my parents would be amused, as am I. They graduated from ISU in 1976, and I am currently an undergrad at UH.
Haec merda tauri est. Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.
Nesting away..
Only now at the end, young Hoaxer, do you fully comprehend the POWER of the dark-side/Internet.
So, does slashcode break too?
I view this as no different than spamming. Regardless of its intent, joke or not - some responsibility must be taken by the initial sender. If I was to create a 'gag' virus for me and my friends .. that got "outta controll" .. would I be responsibile? You bet i would.
.. However, it might as well, as it replicates itself by preying on an obvious ignorence of the recipient.
.. all very minimal on their own. But over a 7 year period this adds up.
Granted, this does not spread on its own
Lost man hours explaining 'its a hoax', extra cycles to toss mail, extra disk space, more packet traffic
Make the mother f-cker pay.
On May 12, 2003, the honorable Beauford T. Justice found William Gates and Microsoft Corporation jointly liable for $49,035.29, inclusive of pre-judgment interest, for breach of contract. Whereas Gates, acting on behalf of Microsoft employed the plaintiffs to test Microsoft's new e-mail tracking program.
Fight Spammers!
**posting again bwahahaha**
I sent it to the president & CEO of IBM (where I was working at the time), and my VP and a whole lot of other executives and co-workers. I was only fortunate that the guy that had the authority to fire me was on vacation at the time. oh. the stupidity
Does Seattle still have the monorail that came with the Space Needle? Besides, Dick Tracy had wrist phones in the 1930's. Heinlein being Heinlein, I'm surprised that he didn't predict ring-tones, but perhaps this was a later future where they were no longer a big deal.
One line blog. I hear that they're called Twitters now.
Here's some help for our friend "Iphtashu Fitz": Mack went to Iowa State.
My mom got hit with the jdbmgr.exe one. I thought it was pretty clever, but really harmless. Anyone who would use that app (it has something to do with programing java) would be smart enough to not be affected by it.
Now my mom checks snopes.com for everything.
Etiquette is etiquette. He kills his mother but he can't wear grey trousers.
In Mack's own words: 'It was just a joke ... and Mack said...
Magarity doesn't like it when people talk about themselfs in the third person. It really annoys magarity.
Oddly enough, it's Microsoft
www.facebook.com/DareDefendOurRights
www.fairtax.org
Nah, I think it's better to just live with them. It won't accomplish anything to dash off angry messages to your acquaintances --- it's just more rudeness on your part. I think it's better to be a bit forgiving of these things. They aren't as tech-savvy as you and usually mean well. How hard is it really for you to delete a nonsense chain-letter now and then from an acquaintance?
WASHINGTON, D.C.--The Institute for the Investigation of Irregular Internet Phenomena announced today that many Internet users are becoming infected by a new virus that causes them to believe without question every groundless story, legend, and dire warning that shows up in their inbox or on their browser. The Gullibility Virus, as it is called, apparently makes people believe and forward copies of silly hoaxes relating to cookie recipes, email viruses, taxes on modems, and get-rich-quick schemes.
"These are not just readers of tabloids or people who buy lottery tickets based on fortune cookie numbers," a spokesman said. "Most are otherwise normal people, who would laugh at the same stories if told to them by a stranger on a street corner." However, once these same people become infected with the Gullibility Virus, they believe anything they read on the Internet.
"My immunity to tall tales and bizarre claims is all gone," reported one weeping victim. "I believe every warning message and sick child story my friends forward to me, even though most of the messages are anonymous."
Another victim, now in remission, added, "When I first heard about Good Times, I just accepted it without question. After all, there were dozens of other recipients on the mail header, so I thought the virus must be true." It was a long time, the victim said, before she could stand up at a Hoaxees Anonymous meeting and state, "My name is Jane, and I've been hoaxed." Now, however, she is spreading the word. "Challenge and check whatever you read," she says.
Internet users are urged to examine themselves for symptoms of the virus, which include the following:
the willingness to believe improbable stories without thinking the urge to forward multiple copies of such stories to others a lack of desire to take three minutes to check to see if a story is true T. C. is an example of someone recently infected. He told one reporter, "I read on the Net that the major ingredient in almost all shampoos makes your hair fall out, so I've stopped using shampoo." When told about the Gullibility Virus, T. C. said he would stop reading email, so that he would not become infected. Anyone with symptoms like these is urged to seek help immediately. Experts recommend that at the first feelings of gullibility, Internet users rush to their favorite search engine and look up the item tempting them to thoughtless credence. Most hoaxes, legends, and tall tales have been widely discussed and exposed by the Internet community.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. The story is a dupe, the topic is boring, the facts weren't checked. WE GET IT!!
No doubt his email addresses no longer work, but there they are.
Trolls lurk everywhere. Mod them down.
I wonder if there's any way to get a chain letter like this which would persuade people to write a letter to congress protesting the DMCA... ... it'd be more believable if you ask folks to BCC the letter to some junk yahoo e-mail box for 'tracking purposes.'
___
It's the end of my comment as I know it and I feel fine.
Forward this email to 10 people you know and trust. If you follow these instructions, within 7 days you will have 10 fewer friends.
Where in the hell is my money damn it!!
I remember when I first received a copy of this email from my friend back in 96. I thought it was hilarious. I always wondered who came up with it.
It's pretty neat they were able to back track it after all this time.
"Who is the Journal of Quantum Physics going to believe?" --Stephen Hawking
Seriously who else could it be but Al Gore.
Everyone knows he's the ultimate internet pioneer!
Ditto. I've blocked friends-of-friends who have gotten my address somehow-they go right into the spam folder. Usually, being polite helps-I kindly tell people that I've probably seen everything they think is "funny", that I probably saw it for the first time in 1994 when they didn't even know the Internet existed, and that I didn't mind them sending me stuff as long as it was truly original, new, or funny. And I still get the odd funny e-mail I haven't seen, but most of my friends just learned to leave me alone.
One interesting way to get the goat of someone who's sending obnoxious e-mails is to calmly send them an e-mail containing their IP address, their e-mail client, the list of servers their e-mail passed through, and their operating system type. For some reason, that usually scares them away;)
If my answers frighten you, stop asking scary questions.
He started it as a joke.
And he didn't mean anything malicious by it.
He isn't anymore guilty than millions of other people who passed it on.
If he didn't do it, someone else would have.
Hopefully I didn't put any [] around my words.
Outlook and OE, which would run VB script automatically in the preview window or when the email was opened.
One line blog. I hear that they're called Twitters now.
Some genius was inventing indentation by use of the > symbol. Little did he know that we'd all be surfing greater-than "waves" for the next millenium and a half.
>
> >
> > >
> > > >
> > > > >surf's up!
> > > >
> > >
> >
>
stuff |
Reply to this post and you'll receive good luck and $1000!!!
I know I'm going to be modded up on this
Sorry, how do I claim my $203.15? Thanks!
When the revolution comes, this guy will be first against the wall.
I got the Bill Gates email from a friend around Thanksgiving of 1997. We made fun of my him for sending it around, but he reasoned "it's probably not true, but it's worth the 2 seconds to send it in case it is."
So when I got back to school after Thanksgiving break I forged the headers in my email to write a message "from" Bill Gates to my friend. The message thanked him for participating in the study and gave him instructions for collecting his $1000. All he had to do was send a self addressed stamped envelope to Microsoft with a letter containing his name and a confirmation number.
Over a year passed by and I never brought it up to my friend. I think it was around Christmas of '98 when we were all home again from college and hanging out when someone brought up the Bill Gates email hoax.
My friend said, "Did I ever tell you guys what happened with that? I got an email saying I won the money, so I followed the instructions and sent back a self addressed stamped envelope, but Microsoft just sent the envelope back to me. I guess it wasn't real, but it was worth the 37 cents just in case it was real."
I finally told him what happened after I laughed for about ten minutes.
OddManIn: A Game of guns and game theory.
I used to delete these things, which were invariably forwarded to me by well-meaning but unfortunately rather dumb acquaintances. Now I subvert them: Darwin 2.0. Funny; I don't get nearly as many as I used to.
You forgot the link.
It's too bad that more hoax "victims" don't get this one...
> Greetings, You have just received the "IRISH VIRUS".
> As we don't have any programming experience, this Virus
> works on the honour system. Please delete all the files
> on your hard drive manually and forward this Virus to
> everyone on your mailing list. Thank you for your cooperation.
Confidence is the feeling you have before you understand the situation.
Yes, we still have a monorail, but there was a fire so it's not running for the summer. They're going to build a big shiny new one that goes somewhere else as well.
"When I got back to school, my account was locked up. There was like a gigabyte of mail, thousands upon thousands of messages."
Sounds like he could've used Gmail.
And all you have to do is mail some postcards to five people on the top of the list, add your name, etc etc, you should receive 1,000 postcards in a few weeks time. Same basic premise just different medium.
These e-mails can be a very good thing. How else would I know that aspartame kills diabetics and my kidney is in danger of being stolen after a night of drinking?
If you delete the file, it gets recreated instantly.
-9mm-
There was another vulnerability involving the midi mime-type. Outlook just executed anything that declared itself to be midi and thus if it was an executable, it would run it without asking.
Ahhh...the great dumpster continuum. Many a free computer will be found there. -- sowth (748135)
One of his buddies had gotten a make-money-fast spam and Mack said 'I can come up with something better than that.'
I dunno about that. It sounds an awful lot like an urban legend to me. I mean, how reasonable is it that a couple of college kids sitting around just invented this hoax? It sounds outrageous, but then when you think about it, it's pretty reasonable. A little too reasonable. Kinda like the one where some guy gets seduced by a hot woman only to wake up in a tub of ice one kidney lighter. Could totally happen, right? So, I'm skeptical.
Even stranger, I'm pretty sure I saw this hoax (if that's really what it is) before 1997. It's more like a 1987 kinda thing... by 1997, the general population had at least some clue about e-mail.
Plus, it's not like Slashdot is famous for its fact-checking department. I'm sure CmdrTaco is a big fan of MythBusters, but that's not really the same thing. In its heyday, WIRED had a pretty good reputation in that department, but who knows what it's like over there these days with all the lightweight fluff those guys run? How do we know that this Bryan Mack really wrote this e-mail? (And does 'Bryan Mack' even sound like a real name?) Who's to say he's not just taking credit for someone else's work, work that the author was kind enough to place in the public domain, just to gain a few minutes of fame?
Perhaps it was a joke, but underestimating the lack of knowledge regarding technology of the average person is no laughing matter. I don't think it's hard to predict how such a "joke" could get out of hand fairly quickly.
Besides, I'm not lobbying people to write to him. I just thought I'd present them with the opportunity if they choose to do so.
On his website, he even discusses his real estate involvement with something akin to a pyramid scheme, if you check it out.
What is Bryan's email address?
"It takes considerable knowledge just to realize the extent of your own ignorance." - Thomas Sowell
To the moderator who mods me up as insightful...
This account has been seized by the GNAA. That is all.
We all know, spammers are the first to use a practical technology to uniquely identify where the mail goes to (thanks in a large part to HTML/Rich text mails) with the use of either micro images or real images. The server just needs to keep track of your IP (easily retrieved from the HTTP header when your email program tries to get that image) to know who are receiveing it and reading it.
I would not be surprised if reputable companies start using these to find who are their target audience for a promotion and target them directly with ads through google or advertising.com etc.
Remember, the above statement constitutes prior art and hence this idea cannot be patented
Actually, if you did deeper, he's got this note on the site:
My new email address as of 06-02-2004 is mack at fleetmack.com - click the above link to send me an email, or type mack at fleetmack.com - I won't post it on this site as an address anymore to avoid spam. My old email addy of bryan@ fleetmack.com does not work anymore and will be bounced effective 06-05-2004
*BZZZZZZT* wrong.
Article says
It's not a big deal, but if you're going to go to the trouble of pumping up your submission with a lovely URL to a school, get the right one.
.sigs are for post^Hers.
It does? I remember a friend of mine that deleted it in Windows 98 and it wasn't recreated. You're probably talking about Windows that has this auto-restore feature (which can be a pain in the ass), but then I have no XP machine so I don't even know if that particular file still exists.
Ahhh...the great dumpster continuum. Many a free computer will be found there. -- sowth (748135)
You're the idiot, Annonymous Coward.
I call these things paper viruses, primarily because they spread like one and are just as bad sometimes.
I'm going to go off the deep end if I ever have to again fix the mess a certain someone in admissions caused because one of her friend's sent her the "Remove the jdbgmgr virus from your machine, and send this to all your friends so they think your brilliant and..." message and forwards it to half the campus. You know she did it when the phone basicially explodes off my desk with calls concerning it.
Telling her why not to send it to her entire contact list it like talking to this wall here. If she was listening, she wouldn't have done it three times now.
In Soviet Russia, Trojan exploits YOU!
For each time i find that crap in my inbox i shall kill you!
Very jerky thing to do. OTOH, it does IMO prove that Mack started the thing. Look at his web site, note his style of humor, and his make-money-now link....yeah, sounds like the guy
his hoax ended up in my mail box in PORTUGUESE. yes, someone actually translated the hoax, and im guessing that his message was probably translated in as many languages as the bible...pretty good for a quick hoax, huh?
Mod me up and win $203.15!
I usually just block the people without telling them. I filter out BOTH of my parent's email addresses, and they still haven't found out (they NEVER send any worthwhile emails, even though they spend 30 minutes to an hour every day using it).
just use google to find what that story is about, how it was create, whether it's hoax or not, easily.
My quick search of Google Groups seems to support the idea that it showed up in November of 1997. Search for "Bill Gates $1000" before Nov. 1997 and the hoax doesn't show up. Then do the same search before Dec. 1997 and a bunch of things start popping up, such as this thread where someone asks if the hoax has been seen prior to 25 Nov 97 and gets no reply showing a previous occurrence. Here is another message indicating that it was defnitely hot in Dec 1997 (the poster complains about repeatedly getting it).
Not proof, but likeliness of the story's truth.
What part of, "It's Funny, Laugh" did you fail to understand?
Hades, PoD: Official Advocate
You should really give Evo 1.4 a try. It has come a long way since then...
Now I know who to sue for the money they owe me!
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
And when the spammers get the message forwarded back to their email address they can harvest all the other email addresses from it. I could harvest thousands (millions?) of peoples addresses this way. The more stupid friends they have, the wider this net is.
The old one used to be shiny and new too, you know. I swear, you people just can't be trusted with anything nice!
One line blog. I hear that they're called Twitters now.
He apparently classifies himself with "the most uneducated people alive."
"There's not a soul on Earth who enjoys the stuff and the people who send this have to be the most uneducated people alive."--Bryan Mack on SPAM
This is straight from his website.
I thought Wired was just a little bit higher caliber than this.
These days Wired is advertising that you pay for.
"Better look at me boss, I've got troubles."
"Better look at me boss, I've got troubles."
"Better look at me boss, I've got troubles."
(Bonus points to whoever gets the reference.)
tasks(723) drafts(105) languages(484) examples(29106)
I had a friend in highschool who registered (something to the effect of) billgates@hotmail.com and sent an email to every address that could be found in the headers. He claimed he was actually Bill Gates and need a name, address, and telephone number to send the checks to.
A large number of the recipients actually replied with the requested information. Even worse was the number of people that replied believing they were really giving this information in order to receive a check.. but couldn't be bother to write their areacode, zipcode, state, or city with their reply.
Joe Doe
112 4th Street
Thanks, now Billy can get that new lung!
- John
If you're a writer for a technical magazine, shouldn't you at least have the intelligence to spot a scam/hoax email like that within about two seconds?
I've seen worse. I met a guy that was head of some kind of security division at Symantec. It was previously a standalone company that was acquired by Symantec.
Anyway, he told me that he had to get someone in his office from his staff to verify an email that came from "Admin" telling him to open some kind of spam malware.
But hey, he drives a Porsche...
Turns out there's a virus for the GroupWise client that doesn't even require a preview pane. Haven't bothered to look it up, but it showed up at work.
tasks(723) drafts(105) languages(484) examples(29106)
Any1 who believed in this has got to be an idiot. Pure idiot.
You expect Bill Gates, teh richest person in world, who himself owns resources to populate even gmail's 1gb with MS crap, to ask you for a help???? And if ever, a pro believed in this, he deserves to drown in a glass of water. "Mail forwarding automatically detected" - how can you fall for that.
Damn it. See, its this easy to make bucks. And we all aspire to become the next human compiler etc......
make the check payable to Myron Tereshchuk.
3 22 1&mode=thread&tid=133&tid=186
http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=04/06/27/134
I'm here for the experience, not the Hyperbole.
Jonathon Keats seems to be a published author with a book on Amazon and everything... who knows if he's also Jon Katz.
He's being facetious - it's mock-seriousness in the bulk of the article.
The article wasn't simply pointing out that this letter was a hoax, but got to the bottom of it and found the origin of something the rest of us were sure was lost in the mists of email forwarding.
"Win treats sysadmins better than users. Mac treats users better than sysadmins. Linux treats everyone like sysadmins."
I'll take a stab at Methuselah's Children, but it was a pretty standard technology in a lot of his stories. Of course, it was combined with RSS newsfeeds too.
One line blog. I hear that they're called Twitters now.
Sweet, Anon will now be subscribed. Why pay for one, just login as AC and.... oh.
What do I get now?
GTRacer
- God Bless Google Groups
Defending IP by destroying access to it? That makes sense, RIAA/MPAA. Go to the corner until you can play nice!
With this approach the problem will never be solved or even reduced. Even if I only educate one person that this is a load of bull, that's one less person forwarding this crap around to everyone they know.
Introducing the new Occam Fusion! Now with sqrt(-1) fewer blades!
What I thought to be impossible had suddenly become a reality.
Great news, then! If all this spam and chain mail comes true, maybe Bill Gates really WILL send me $200, and I'll have a large enough "one of those" to "THR0W IT T0 H3R FRom Accros5 the Ro0m. xldiendas cqwqsd". That, I will learn "The Secret Of Become Truly Loaded In Just Several Many Weeks".
That's what you get for talking to girls.
paintball
I think most people are aware that TANSTAAFL and Gates is not going to be sending them money. Just because the email is forwarded by someone doesn't mean they fell for it. This "laughing" that you and your colleagues did--did any of it involve sending it on to someone else so they could laugh or possibly gulled?
Back in 95 or so I recall that Penn State's VM system would let someone send emails where all the information could be set at the command line. I would get emails from bgates@microsoft.com and such all the time from my friend who discovered this.
I'm sure I could've traced the email back to the VMS that originated it, but I don't know if the system would have tracked his connection and sending of the email. I was not like he could log in and create the email and set the reply to, etc. He had to connect on the correct port and send commands as if he were an email client.
where to I sign!!!?
(or to whom to I email my SSN and credit card number?)
Well e-mail is one thing, but let's not forget that instant messenger services are also susceptible to hoaxes and viruses. They've gained so much popularity in the recent years that a well executed attack on say AOL Instant Messenger could do a lot of damage to personal computers. Especially since so many non-tech savvy people use it.
i'm wearing some right now
Using ./ is not the best way to implement such
a scheme, since you can't attach the usual 1-pixel
transparent GIF that creates a log entry in your
Apache log when recipients view it; after all, you want to record where your message travels to...
Jon Katz is not writing technical articles anymore, AFAIK. He's writing books about dogs. While there are probably innumerable jokes that people could make playing off this, unlike his Slashdot writing or some of his quasi-philosophy books written in the dotcom era, his dog books seem to be pretty well-received by their target audience, and they've been generally well-reviewed. I think you're also being a little too harsh on the person who actually wrote this article. You need a lead-in for a story, this was a fine enough lead-in, and if Wired occasionally writes somewhat whimsical articles like this, so what? Wired was always about features, not news, and somewhat silly features are hardly new to them. And it's a kind of amusing story. Don't be such a sourpuss.
This site has free ipods if you sign up and get 5 friends to sign up for a partner site (e.g. Ancestry.com free trial, which can be cancelled the next day). At least some people have received theirs, according to this discussion forum. I wonder what the signup/ipod giveaway ratio is?
I remmember getting that email early fall 97 I believe it was before november. Maybe my memmory is wrong. In any case, I must have recieved it very soon after it was created. A lot of people were new to email and the internet and didn't know what was possible. I recieved something like 7 free cd's that year from various web coupons and promotions as companies like cdnow and cd universe and amazon were giving all kinds of crazy discounts just to attract visitors. So its not that much farther of a logical leep to be paid for forwarding email.
Well.. maybe. Or Maybe not. But Definitely not sort of.
Send $5 to the 5 names on this list, then put your name at the top, remove that last entry, and send it to 5 of your friends.
I forgot where I read that (maybe even here), but here goes anyway:
Imagine that combined with penis enlargment spam. Cut your penis into 5 parts, send each part to top 5 names on the list.. receive more penis in the mail! Guaranteed to add inches and inches to your penis!
I wrote it over 7 years ago for my web site, posted it to a couple of humor newsgroups to get some promo. Someone stripped my intro, sent it to a couple of humor lists with the claim it was real, and it exploded.
Sadly, my Shit Nickels Fast chain letter parody did not do as well.
- Greg
Start a happiness pandemic
Mmmmmmmm.....
Like when I sent an email like this as joke to one of my fellow college students (who wasn't exactly the sharpest knives in the drawer) that ran - "You recieved this email as a special invitation tho help out with a beta test of a very special medical survey & tracking program for Trojan. If you help them out beta test this by clicking the following link and placing your Penis on your scanner now, Trojan will send you a free personalized pack of condoms in the mail! Please feel free to forward this message and invite all of your friends to help out."
Well, I'd expected to have him come around and comment to me about it or something. Maybe even stupidly routing it around to the entire dorm. But I heard nothing for a few weeks. I then later heard a story from a female co-worker at the CS helpdesk that *some pervert* had called sometime back wanting to know how they could get pubic hairs out of their fax scanner! I simply ROTFLMAO... (And so did she after I explained what I thought had happened.)
Can you imagine how much simoniker is gonna rake in from Gates by getting so many people to read the email.. Lucky bastard. Wish I would have thought to post it on Slashdot.
this flash movie is funny (if you have flash player)... it is a spoof of these chain letter emails... oldie but goodie...
http://gw6help.uvsc.edu/gw6help/soapbox.swf
The guy who wrote the story is just sore that he didn't forward the mail and so didn't receive any money. Why, I just received my check for $4340.24 from Bill Gates only yesterday.
Doesn't it make you feel good to know that our freedoms are protected by politicans, lawyers and journalists.
You're all losers.
Not Me.
Because it was about finding the source...
Why is this not +5 funny?
Today I'm one of those bastards that use Mail.App. The day I have got more time, I'll try installing Linux again (read: I have this nice desktop waiting for me to play with it, but I've some other priorities right now)
Ahhh...the great dumpster continuum. Many a free computer will be found there. -- sowth (748135)
And now Microsoft can take the apropriate action:
Microsoft letter to press about the hoax:
Message to Customers on "Email Tracking Program" Hoax
REDMOND, Wash., May 12, 1999 - Recently an email has been circulating on the Internet about a new "email tracking system" from Microsoft.
As you may have suspected, this is a hoax and did not originate from Microsoft.
Microsoft does try to investigate the source of these hoaxes and take appropriate action. However, many times the hoaxers take elaborate steps to shield their true identities and we cannot identify them. Privacy and security are very important to us here at Microsoft, and we work every day to build great software for the Internet that keeps information safe, secure and private.
We regret any inconvenience this may have caused you.
Sincerely,
Microsoft Corporation
Someone played a hoax on Slashdot the other day with this link.
"Beware of he who would deny you access to information, for in his heart, he dreams himself your master."
Not to my knowledge. Though, if you think about it, any such worm would be rather unsuccessful -- how many people do you know that use pine, and know people that use pine as well? Any worm which tries to take advantage of the vulnerability is going to need to attack more than just Pine.
http://www.is.mines.edu/dirsearch/detail.asp?perso n=Mack%2CBryan%2CL%2E%2C
http://www.fleetmack.com/
I think you really mean to kill the dummy who took the joke seriously and forwarded it everywhere.
I, on the other hand, want to kill the tiny part of each person's brain that makes them not think about shit like this before sending it to their entire address book (all visible to one another in the To: line, of course). Unfortunately, the treatment would have to be applied to about 95% of the human race. Maybe it would be more efficient with a retrovirus doing the work. Now that would be ironic.
"A great democracy must be progressive or it will soon cease to be a great democracy." --Theodore Roosevelt
I built my own chain mail some time ago. It was written in Hungarian, and this is a poor and partial translation, but here it is:
This mail is forwarded to you as part of a sociology experiment / game. The name of the game is: "Who is the lamest?" If you would like to participate, all you have to do is to
forward this letter to your three lamest acquaintances.
(This is how you got this letter.) We leave it to your own judgement to decide what makes someone lame. But please participate only if you play by the spirit of the game. Please try to pick people much lamer than you. Of course, if you are very lame yourself, you can make some compromises.
Thank you for your participation.
Google's new email offering, gmail, is what everyone's talking about! And people are confused about Google's "tracking" of the messages you send and putting ads on it.
So a letter that explains that Google's testing a new email system (true!) and that they're using their search technology to track emails would be beleived by enough people to make a new round of this chain letter spread even faster than it ever had!
C'mon /. folks! Here's a challenge! Write a letter and sent it to a dozen of your most gullible friends!
Best Buy can have you arrested
Everyone who mods the parent of this article isightful will get $25!
In addition, everyone who metamoderates the moderators will get $50!
Please help the folks at /. refine their technology by participating in this important test.
The idea is to make people feel stupid for being a part of the chain letter, not to insult them.
This works for me as well. I usually refer them to the following hoax busting sites:
Snopes
Urban Legends
Symantec Hoax Warnings ("$800 from Microsoft" is listed first on this page!
Hoaxbusters
VMyths
If more gullible journalists and people would think a little and do some simple, quick research before hitting the SEND button then we'd all be a lot better off.
Da Blog
How's it going?
Crucify Him!
Crucify Him!
Crucify Him!
Dissenter
"There is no knowledge that is not power."
Minor correction: Bryan Mack attended the University of Iowa (from the article). Martin Miller, formerly of the University of Houston, was the person who had archived the thousands of emails that traced back to Bryan Mack.
A funny story about that..
As soon as I heard about it I sent an email to a girl I know who has a horrible tendancy to believe these things explaining that it was a hoax. The following conversation ensued.
First, the important back end to the punchline: Her comptuer at the time was an old Compaq Presario, 200mhz, 32 megs of RAM, and Windows95
Her: I deleted that file
Me: I told you it was a hoax
Her: Yeah but I had the file on my computer!
(I decide to take this and run with it)
Me: I told you it was a hoax for a reason, now if you shut your computer down you aren't going to be able to start it back up again.
(she signs off and isn't seen online again for about a week)
Her: Colin am I ever going to be able to turn off my computer?
She BELIEVED me and actually left her dinosaur Win95 box running for a week straight. I was surprised after running that long she was able to get on to AOL 6.0 and IM me without the system falling to its knees in a spectacular stream of 30 BSODs.
Stupid is as stupid does I guess
...and that's all there is to it.
Didn't any of these people know enough to think that no reports are magically sent to Microsoft when you e-mail someone?
Microsoft produces a major e-mail server (Exchange) and the dominant email clients (Outlook/Outlook Express). I agree that this email is stupid; that being said, if anyone could orchestrate a system where a special header passing through a system triggered a message being sent to Microsoft, it would be Microsoft.
(... imagine the privacy implications!)
Microsoft advocates *Passport* as a global authentication system, which lets them obtain your personal information and monitor who you are authenticating yourself to anytime, anywhere. You think they'd be concerned about the privacy issues involved with passing on an email?
Or have enough elementary business sense to realize that Microsoft won't just send people money for nothing?
Microsoft hands out a web browser and an email client "for nothing". A lot of companies are willing to take a short-term loss for some kind of gain. If there was some huge marketing advantage to knowing something about how email or ideas propagate, I could see this being worthwhile (though perhaps not in the sums that Microsoft is using). Knowing which people know which people can be terribly valuable information when designing marketing campaigns, and this would provide a neat graph. Microsoft *did* in fact do something similar to this when it purchased Hotmail, which allows it to harvest email addresses and derive social graphs that determine who knows and interacts with whom, and how quickly ideas and memes flow. The marketing information inherent in aggregate data derived from Hotmail's contents is incredibly valuable. Suppose "Spiderman 2" marketing goes out, and a bunch of derived data from emails containing "Spiderman 2" in one of the world's largest email systems was made commercially available? How much would you, as the Marketing Director involved, pay to know what people in Phoenix, Arizona were privately saying about your film and your ads? Would it be worth a million dollars to avoid mis-targeting your next multi-million-dollar marketing campaign element?
May we never see th
I don't have that file. I got an email that told me to delete it, so I did. So far so .~ ^.8 . ++++[carrier lost]
Where do I get one of these modems that writes [carrier lost] into web forum posts before it disconnects? It seems like everyone has one but me... or maybe it's done at the ISP level!?.
Dewey, you fool! Your decimal system has played right into my hands!
If you're an Anonymous Coward on slashdot and you don't have the intelligence to spot a rhetorical device used by an author who . . . oh . . . never mind. Don't know what I was thinking . . . .
Excuse me, I'm an engineer with QUME, can you plug your terminal in to a phone line for a sec? We've had some reports of leaky capacitors detabilizing the electron gun on your CRT that could cause sterility, it's something we can fix and patch remotely.
What's your number again?
"Draco dormiens nunquam titillandus."
Posted by simoniker on Tuesday June 29, @06:18PM from the or-not dept.
Iphtashu Fitz writes "We've all seen it. The e-mail forwarded to us from a friend who got it from a coworker whose sister's cousin's roommate's great aunt knows somebody at Microsoft. The one from Bill Gates himself offering you cash to forward the e-mail to others in order to test out their new e-mail tracking system. If you haven't received that one you've undoubtedly gotten other e-mail hoaxes offering anything from gift certificates to free computers to free airline tickets. How do these sorts of hoaxes start and who starts them? Well Jonathon Keats at Wired Magazine decided to track down the origin of the Bill Gates e-mail tracking hoax. After a few dead ends he finally located then-student Bryan Mack, who created the hoax on November 18, 1997 while at the University of Houston. In Mack's own words: 'It was just a joke between a couple friends' that eventually got out of hand. One of his buddies had gotten a make-money-fast spam and Mack said 'I can come up with something better than that.' Three minutes later, Bill Gates' email-tracing program was born. At first he just sent it to a few friends, but those friends sent it to other friends (and so on), and it didn't take long for the e-mail to transform from a joke to a full-fledged hoax."
Can I have my money now?
quoth the parent:
Was it the sheep climbing onto the altar, or the cattle lowing to be slain,
or the Son of God hanging dead and bloodied on a cross that told me this was a world condemned, but loved and bought with blood.
I must point out that:
1) an all knowing being always knows the long-term consequences of his actions.
2) an all powerful being can take whatever actions he desires.
therefore:
3) an all-knowing all-powerful being (God) will always have his creations turn out exactly as he wants them to be.
If this world is "condemned" it is because God wanted it to be that way, from the very beginning, as a matter of logical necessity.
(Just because I know you are thinking it...."Free will" cannot be the culprit since an all knowing being will STILL know what a free being will freely choose to do. Perhaps your God isn't REALLY all knowing, and is only mostly-knowing?)
--AC
By Flowgo and company. Some of their other domains are send4fun.com, cutestuff.com and too many others. I already blocked them from being visited from inside the network I manage. They saw how many people forwarded "cute" emails so they started putting together cute messages that also contain web bugs and advertising links so the recipients would forward them to their friends. As much as it frightens me, it works. I see these bouncing around directly from Flowgo and being forwarded by others. Here's a sample:
Subject: Yankee Doodle Baby
There is a lot more than that, but I don't want to be accused of spamming for them.
But why is the rum gone?
This is a great idea! I don't have the balls to start it myself, but I sure hope *somebody* does!
Especially since it's in the box in the basement right now
Come on. We all know "security through obscurity" doesn't work.
Hey freaks: now you're ju
I just tried it on 3 machines, and it did. One was XP, 2 were 2000. I have no recollection of what it did on 9x boxes, but I seem to recall it not impacting anything. I could be grossly mistaken.
-9mm-
We all know, spammers are the first to use a practical technology to uniquely identify where the mail goes to (thanks in a large part to HTML/Rich text mails) with the use of either micro images or real images. The server just needs to keep track of your IP (easily retrieved from the HTTP header when your email program tries to get that image) to know who are receiveing it and reading it.
I would not be surprised if reputable companies start using these to find who are their target audience for a promotion and target them directly with ads through google or advertising.com etc.
Remember, the above statement constitutes prior art and hence this idea cannot be patented
Google archived example from 1994
cLive ;-)
-- Trinity in high heels carrying a whip: The donimatrix - there is no spoonerism
Back when I worked at a computer repair shop, our front counter girl got that hoax e-mail about the bear file. What did she do? Deleted the file off of every display system we had for sale.
The boss chewed her a new one.
The bear thing is not important at all. There was a similar hoax that was related to long filenames in Win9x, which was sometimes a bit more troublesome.
Ahhh...the great dumpster continuum. Many a free computer will be found there. -- sowth (748135)
I got this blasted email so many times it's not funny. Now I know its because I was at UH until 1998!
I want to know how the modem manages to click the 'submit' button before dropping carrier...
Mack, Bryan
Institutional Advancement
Office: AN 230
Work Telephone: (303) 273-3132
Business Email: bmack@mines.edu
Classification: Directory Entry
Computing User ID: 1941
Please send this to everyone in your address book, NOW.
If a man (or woman) comes to your front door and says he (or she) is conducting a survey and asks you to show them your ass, DO NOT do this.
This is a SCAM!!!!!!!! He (or she) just wants to see your ass.
I wish I'd gotten this yesterday.
From the article: "On truthminers.com, mathematician Simon Nance calculated that in a mere three months of propagation, the email had put Microsoft, AOL, and Intel, individually or in combination, on the hook to owe 7.91 x 10111 dollars." So, the grand sum for three months is under $80,000? That's pretty dumb. It doesn't take a mathematician to figure out this article is total crap. The actual figure from truthminers.com is "close to $226 Billion times 3.5 googol". Now that's exponential growth.
just today, i asked someone to test a website on a PDA. He Told me "sure, my PDA has WLAN, I always use it to surf while i'm on the toilet". Somehow, i found it a little disturbing that he was going to test my software while taking a shit...
I have discovered a truly remarkable sig which this 120 chars is too small to contain.
I usually tell whoever forwarded this to me (as it's usually someone who knows me) that if they keep doing it I'll be forced to block all mail from them.
I do the same. One thing I've found that helps before you block _all_ mail from them is block any thing that comes from their email address where the subject starts with "fw". This will catch "Fwd: make money fast!", "Fw: some joke", "Fw: Re: Fwd: Re: Fw: funny!". Most microsoft MUAs and common webmail systems I've seen handle forwards this way (prepending Fw: or Fwd:). Usually if it's just a FoaF I never get legit forwards from them anyway, and if they want to actually type me an email the chance of the subject starting with Fw is small.
Sometimes I find they remove the freaking subject altogether before forwarding it on.. If that happens I just block everything from them. Works for me so far.
Today I didn't even have to use my AK; I got to say it was a good day -- Icecube
I must admit that I still couldn't believe it long after it happened. Still told friends "don't worry, it's hoax". I still find it very hard to understand why anybody could be so careless as to make it possible after having the warnings of hundreds of some very high-profile hoaxes. I think I even flamed a mainstream-media journalist once for being "careless" to spread a hoax, when it actually was a real trojan....
Employee of Inrupt, Project Release Manager and Community Manager for Solid
Hello, this is a test of the
We will pay $100 to every one who replies to this and help testing.
Also, we will pay $10 for each person who replies below your posting.
Thanks!
Back in the olden days, modems would indeed send NO CARRIER, and many BBSi would cheerfully record it.
Many people didn't set their modems with appropriate timeout space before and after +++, so you could do goofy things like drop the server's modem into command mode (because it faithfully echoed your keystrokes) by doing that. As I recall, some modems even acknowledged the +++ when it was received from remote, so you could have even more fun by embedding +++ATH0 or worse commands into your messages.
There were all sorts of fun things to do with Hayes-compat modems, Back In The Day.
Slashdot's token middle-aged housewife
She BELIEVED me and actually left her dinosaur Win95 box running for a week straight. I was surprised after running that long she was able to get on to AOL 6.0 and IM me without the system falling to its knees in a spectacular stream of 30 BSODs.
Erm, I have my even-more-dinosaurish-these-days Win95 box running 24/7. I reboot on occasion, but probably not weekly, and generally not because of BSODs (inexplicable lockups are more common, but still not weekly).
Of course, I'm not running AOL. And I suppose it's a case of survival of the fittest; crash-prone installs probably led to upgrades sooner than this.
Slashdot's token middle-aged housewife
http://www.discountmags.com/subscriptions.php
I thought it was interesting that all the vunerable systems listed were Linux.
Of course, it doesn't concern me because I read my email with pine running on the university's solaris boxes.
Working toward a usable PDA environment in the spirit of Newton OS: Dynapad
Yeah, the originator was from Iowa State not U of Houston.
:)
Us cyclone fans do crazy things like that!
:wq
Sigh. I remember having Hayes envy with my cheap-ass Radio Shack 300 bauder, with the oh-so-70s DPDT switch on the front to connect...
Yeah, right.
More importantly, what kind of moron would believe that a company like Microsoft will give you a penny for forwarding email?
Far too many such morons exist, considering the number of times I've been forwarded this email. This thing is 7 years old and I still receive it!!
Not sure about you, but taking a dump with a laptop on your lap is weird.
That's what stools are made for.
Do you rest your magazine on your lap while reading it?
Actually, I have an idea that could possibly decrease the amount of hoax e-mails being sent by novice users. Google could use their new ad placement technology to scan the email before it is sent and then report to the user that it is a hoax. Of course, Google would have to maintain a hoax database in order for this to work optimally. I dunno, it sounds like it would be a nice added feature to G-Mail. Arrr!!
Holy crap, I remember that. I subscribed to your lists. Sad day when you stopped publishing.
Jesus was all right but his disciples were thick and ordinary. -John Lennon
It's more complicated. Hayes owned a patent which requried that the +++ have certain timing characteristics. It could not be too fast or too slow -- roughly what it would take someone to type in.
By patenting this Hayes was able to prevent other modem manufacturers that made Hayes-compatable command sets from copying the timing characteristics.
Thus a +++ in data sent to the user would not affect Hayes modems but could create havoc on non-Hayes modems.
A.C.
Nice trick. I find that most people who spam me with silly jokes generally don't ever send me anything worthwhile, but then again I'm reluctant to block them completely, on the off chance that they might send me a real message. Yours is a pretty good compromise: I think I'll apply it on some of my most annoying correspondents right away.
YES IT WORKED FOR ME TOO AND HERE I;m now telljing you all about our new programs included 17% bONUS RANGE FOR QUALIFICATION STUDENTS!!!!!!!!! yes I say "Hello to you once good sir" and here I'min to tell you all about these fine points:: 1)YOUTOO Can make good money forwarding Bill Gates emali AS HAS MY FATHER 1) much avidence has THANKS YOU. Forward to allfriends for cash prize. swimmer ballrom underwater plastic discernment
---
WARNING:Slashdot karma not redeemable in the afterlife.
Try this letter! (remember--it's a JOKE! Don't really forward it to anyone. I don't want to get into trouble.)
Dear Friend:
As you know, GOOGLE is testing a new email system called GMAIL, and they need your help! We all know that GOOGLE is run by smart wiz-kids who think out-of-the-box, not like stodgy old Microsoft or IBM!
Since GOOGLE is about to go public, they want a "new economy" way of issuing their hot new stock offering. Something that moves at "internet time" instead of the old Brick and Mortar way!
GOOGLE want to test a new email tracking system for use with GMAIL. If you forward this message, for every 10 people that receive it (don't worry...Google's powerful search technology can detect it!) you will get ONE SHARE of pre-IPO stock. If the people you send this mail forward it again, then you will receive a share for every HUNDRED they forward, and so on. There is a maximum of 1000 pre-IPO shares per participant in this experiment.
Simply FORWARD THIS MESSAGE IN ITS ENTIRITY to your friends. Be sure to include the following line so Google's powerful "mail sense" technology can find it:
--_BEGIN TRACKING CODE_--
PLOUGH PLOVER XYZZY SNOPES
--_END TRACKING CODE_--
Thank you for helping to participate in this exciting new eMail technology. With your help, Google can devise and perfect the next generation of spam-free email technology! All you have to do is forward this email to at least 10 of your friends.
One thing I've found that helps before you block _all_ mail from them is block any thing that comes from their email address where the subject starts with "fw".
I actually tried that from the server side. Forwarding, on AOL, is an actual message construct, with metadata and everything. After a long battle, I finally convinced TPTB at AOL to let us prevent all e-mail forwarding chains longer than, say, 50 forwards from being sent. If you tried, it popped up a warning that chain letters were against the Terms of Service.. this was a personal fixation of mine, since "jay@aol.com" got not only chain letters intended for me but chain letters intended for ANYONE named Jay.
It didn't make even the tiniest dent. People just started replying w/quoting instead of forwarding once they hit the limit. Sigh.
Jay Levitt
ex-AOL Mail Guy
I've seen that several times and it's always brought a chuckle or two. I'm honored to meet the author. *shakes your hand* Good work, sir!
Ah Ah Ah ! You have caught the Blonde Virus. This virus is honor based. 1)Forward this email to all people in your adress book 2)Erase your hard drive
It has nothing to do with commands being accepted from remote, and everything with characters typed at the remote end being echoed back. It's not a modem problem, it's a *software* problem.
As for embedding problematic code in messages, that's either a software problem or a brain-dead operator problem. Hayes SmartModems (and every other modem since, AFAIK) by default require 1 second of silence before the escape sequence (+++). And once the remote modem has dropped back to command mode, it takes a *local* (to it) command to make it do anything.
Do daemons dream of electric sleep()?
Holy crap! A former subscriber??? Guess the robots from the future haven't found and killed all of you yet.
- Greg
Start a happiness pandemic
That's a good start!
Because it's free.
Hail Eris!!! Look out for the Illuminati!!!!! Wear a tinfoil hat!!!11!!one
worse than receiving a spam is receiving a translated spam!! I already received this microsoft spam in three different languages. I only hope that when they decide do pay me, they do it with american dollars!
What is best in life? To crush your enemies, to see them driven before you and to hear the lamentations of their women.
Looking at the Properties of the document, I could track it back to the author, who probably built it at work (qwest)! Poor sucker is probably going to get fired!
Actually, this still works quite often. The vast majority of users still use dialup. Many modems (especially the cheaper ones) will hang up if you can get the user to send +++ATH0 at all. This means that if you send +++ATH0 as the payload of an ICMP echo request, and they echo it back, you can force a hangup.
Most modems support initialization strings that allow you to disable this feature, or enable the delay to stop attacks like this, but it is often on by default.
The last modem I tried this on was a USR Sportster 56K, and it worked just fine. You can do it with nix's ping command, or with specially crafted ICMP packets from Windows (you can't pass a payload directly to Windows' ping).
I remember a back in the day scheme. A friend and I decided to go through each and every stupid fwd that we received and collect the names. We saved em up for a couple months and ended up with some 30,000 names or so. Then I created a message that had something to do with donating money to help animals. The keenest thing I did was add a "re:" to the beginning of the subject. That way I could deny being the originator. Man did that cause some havoc. I know we got a bunch of email addresses banned. A good time was had by all. Well, maybe just us.
> Bryan Mack, who created the hoax on November 18, 1997
I'm stone cold certain that I first had this hoax (or something *very*
similar; it definitely involved Bill Gates' being able to track how many
people forwarded the message and donating money if enough people did it)
forwarded to me when I was in college. I graduated in May of 1997. That
puts it well before November of 1997. Frankly I'm pretty sure it was
before any part of 1997.
Cut that out, or I will ship you to Norilsk in a box.
The nesting continues.. At a certain momnet they dont get indented further but wen you view that message, the sibblings are indented ok.. (for the next few levels). or you can check it with 'parent'.
"It's too bad that stupidity isn't painful." - Anton LaVey
and counting (can anyone recount?)
**** Increace level number in subject when you reply! ****
It has nothing to do with commands being accepted from remote, and everything with characters typed at the remote end being echoed back. It's not a modem problem, it's a *software* problem.
Um... no. Some modems recognized the characters from remote *with no echo*. Most sysops fixed it on the BBS computer in a hurry, but in a few cases you could hang up on a *user's* computer because their modem defaulted to accepting commands from remote. I wrote code into the Phoenyx to escape the +++ sequence, so as not to allow that problem.
I don't think a real SmartModem had that problem (unless you set it that way on purpose) but not all "Hayes-compat" modems were fully Hayes compatible, and most of us couldn't afford a Hayes. I can't remember what brand my first 1200 was (my 300 was the manually-operated TRS-80 Modem I another poster mentioned... I've still got it) but it didn't support everything a Hayes did, and did support some things Hayes didn't (which wasn't always good).
And of course once that got fixed, it was always fun to social-engineer people into doing it (or similar things) to their own modem...
(I'm sure the bits have all rotted away, or I'd pull out the old diskettes (and an Amiga disk-reader program, I suppose) and dig up old Phoenyx messages on the subject...)
Slashdot's token middle-aged housewife
It not just a popular saying, it's now the TRUTH.
Many people didn't set their modems with appropriate timeout space before and after +++,
In some BBS programs, you could change the escape charactor and change it in the modem by an S register. Changing the +++ to ^V^V^V (control V in place of +) disabled a lot of remote pranks. I got the idea from the Motorola Alphamate paging protocol my text paging terminal software used. In this case security via obscurity worked for me. Users of the BBS just knew that a remote +++ did nothing.
The truth shall set you free!
I used to have loads of fun with this.
ping host -d 2b2b2b..
I forget the rest - but basically +++ATH0 in hex. Used to remember it off by heart.. oh well.
So then, the only issue you have is that your email is added to a list of 20 other people, all of which forward it on leaving your email address in the header. Lather, rinse, repeat.
Ralsky loves when that happens.
Simply stating [Citation Needed] does not automatically make you insightful or brilliant.
IRC and ./ from the pooper
compared to all those 'you have been hugged' or 'you have a friend' mails that instruct you to forward it to x friends or else something bad will happen to you! *phear*
the worst thing is ofcourse that people keep forwarding this #!$#@%$$#%^!@&^@# crap!
On a long enough timeline, the survival rate for everyone drops to zero.
When will we reach MAXINT ? ^_^
So Long and Thanks for All the Fish!
Done. Payable in slashdot subscriptions.
I'm more suprised that she was able to get the Win95 box to run for that full week straight.
Buy Steampunk Clothing Online!
I think you're on crack.
.sig for many, many years and have yet to be contacted by any sysadmin, user, or other friend that it causes any problems.
Modems would not send NO CARRIER out to the remote end. Rather, the NO CARRIER that a BBS would record would be the report from it's own local modem indicating that it no longer had a signal from the remote end. Proof? Many of my friends and I ran BBSs and we all set our modems to V0--numeric error messages. Not once did our logs ever show "NO CARRIER". It was always 0 (OK), 2 (RING), or 3 (NO CARRIER). In the earliest days dropped carrier was a big problem because many modems were not equipped to detect a loss of carrier and would happily continue talking with an end which had hung up.
The same goes for the escape sequence. You could send your own modem into command mode but you cannot send a remote modem into command mode.
If you really feel strongly about your hoax then please point to some real citations. My friends and I have been using my style of
+++ATHZ 99:5:80