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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.
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.
"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.
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.
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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!
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.
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....
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.
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)
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
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.
"History doesn't repeat itself, but it does rhyme." Mark Twain
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.
Only now at the end, young Hoaxer, do you fully comprehend the POWER of the dark-side/Internet.
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
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!!
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.
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 |
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.
Even neater after you read that it was created on November 18, 1997!
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.
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.
*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.
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.
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.
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...
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."
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.
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
http://www.is.mines.edu/dirsearch/detail.asp?perso n=Mack%2CBryan%2CL%2E%2C
http://www.fleetmack.com/
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
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.
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!
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."
Minor correction to your correction: Bryan Mack attended Iowa State University(from the article), which is much different than University of Iowa.
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-
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.
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.
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
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
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()?
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).
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