MS Promotion Site Flagged By MS Anti-Phishing

Stony Stevenson writes "Microsoft has launched a marketing campaign that lets any student at an Australian university buy the Ultimate edition of Office 2007, usual price $1,150, for only $75 — a discount of about 93%. But when students go to the promotion site, Microsoft Live OneCare pops up a warning that the site may be a phishing scam. The warning reads: 'Phishing filter has determined this might be a phishing website. We recommend that you do not give any of your information to such websites. Phishing websites impersonate trustworthy websites for the purpose of obtaining your personal or financial information.'"

Comments

Microsoft has finally done it!

[Samalie]

Its about time....Microsoft has finally recognized itself as evil. Hell has officially frozen over :)

Re:Microsoft has finally done it!

[DittoBox]

Yes but I don't see Steve Ballmer sprouting wings and gaining lift.

Ergo, the swine are not flying yet.

Re:Microsoft has finally done it!

[memojuez]

That seems to go hand in hand with my antivirus program deleting the IE7 installer from my computer because it deemed it a "Generic Trojan"

Re:Microsoft has finally done it!

[antirelic]

Well... this is actual proof that the Anti-Phishing shit actually works...

Oh no!

[AlphaLop]

A Microsoft product that does not work right? The Shock of it... I better unload all my Microsoft stock before the other investors get wind of this! ;)

It Works!

[7bit]

Wow! Live OneCare actually does work!

On a related topic..

[StikyPad]

If any Australian students would like to make a cool 100% profit, please let me know. :)

Re:On a related topic..

[ZachPruckowski]

Yeah, if you can deal with Clippy saying "G'day mate, how 'bout some letter-writing?"

Re:On a related topic..

[DeathElk]

Nah, take it from an Australian - that should be "Wanna write a f@#kn' letter? Well? Do ya c*nt??"

New Marketing Campaign

[L. VeGas]

It's just part of an overall "bad boy" campaign that MS is using to try to seem cool.

Go ahead and buy from us. IF YOU HAVE THE GUTS.

Re:IE7 declares...

[SEMW]

No it doesn't; I've just tried it.

Apple says it best

[mad_psych0]

"You are attempting to save money! Would you like to allow or deny?"

Re:No surprise

[CommunistHamster]

I have a large company, and it knows exactly what my right hand is doing...

Re:Does it ....

[celardore]

My Australian is rusty.

Give him a good going over with some wire wool and light oil, that should fix him right up!

Re:Microsoft mistake lead to office price cut

[PopeRatzo]

Let's think about the wonderful "free marketplace" and those supposedly immutable laws of supply and demand.

Is there an abundance of Office 2007 licenses in Australia that is causing this price drop or is demand so low that Microsoft has to practically give its products away there to move them off the shelves?

If this isn't clear evidence that companies like Microsoft are no more interested in anything like a "free market" than your average Republican congressman, I don't know what is. The only thing that's free is these corporations' desire and ability to fuck us over.

We are being played, friends.

Bill Gates Cyborg Icon

[Anonymous Coward]

Slightly off topic, but can we motion to come up with a new 'M$' logo?

1. The guy is barely involved within the company anymore.
2. Bill Gates has started a profoundly large charity foundation
3. Someone could make some downright hilarious steve ballmer cyborg icons with minimal effort.

Am I the only one feeling this?

Re:Bill Gates Cyborg Icon

[StikyPad]

They only gave out of their abundance. Nothing more, nothing less.

Not true. It doesn't matter that he had an abundance, rather that he felt compelled to use it for the benefit of others. He may have benefitted the reputation of himself, or his company, but the gains for himself were not nearly as much as the gains of the recipients. It was inequitable, therefore it was charitable. There are plenty of rich people who sit on their money instead of putting it to good use.

All your shit talking does is discourage others from following his lead, because they're just going to say "Hey, I'm just going to get flack for it anyway -- fsck 'em."

Re:Bill Gates Cyborg Icon

[Jarden]

Yawn. I'm tired of this incessant need to bag Bill Gates no matter what he does. And your argument doesn't stand up at all.

The fact is he's given more money to philanthropic endeavours than any other person. Ever. So get off your fucking high horse.

I saw this guy the other day give $20 to a homeless person. I went over to him and said "Hey you fuck, you earn over $50k a year and I just saw you give ONLY $20 to that hungry guy? You tight asshole!". Then I punched him in the face and took his wallet. Because we need less assholes like that.

Going by your stats Bill Gates has given to charity around 50% of the money he's EARNED. What proportion of the money YOU have EARNED have you given to charity?

Apparently you have some preconceived notion of how much money rich people should be left with after donating for their donation to "mean" something. Perhaps you should publish a "JimDaGeek guide to philanthropy" so the world's rich can learn from you.

Re:Bill Gates Cyborg Icon

[skoaldipper]

Slightly off topic, but can we motion to come up with a new 'M$' logo?

This is the best I could do on such short notice.

Because, you know

[dctoastman]

It's not like anyone would report the site as a phishing scam for cheap laughs.

half way there

[Anonymous Coward]

Now all we need is for Norton AntiVirus to detect itself as a virus and everything will be all set.

Probably a way to reduce "losses"

[gcnaddict]

It's probably just a way to reduces losses which Microsoft might incur as a result of this huge discount.

losses... lol

Re:Does it ....

[HTH NE1]

Actually it does have an Australian to English converter. I'm not too sure what good that would do a Yank though.

I think it must be broken. I keep putting in Fosters but I don't get back beer.

And in the English to Australian converter, I keep putting in coffee but I still don't get back beer.

Re:Does it ....

[shudde]

I think it must be broken. I keep putting in Fosters but I don't get back beer.

There's a simple answer, Fosters isn't beer. We just export that swill, no one here actually drinks it.

Re:Ultimate?

[SEMW]

For all the MS Office products I've used, generally there's been a Standard (Word/Excel/Powerpoint/Outlook) and Pro (Add Access and I believe frontpage). So what does "ultimate" bring to the table? Pro has Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, Access, and Publisher; Ultimate adds OneNote, Groove, and InfoPath. What are Groove and Infopath, you ask? Your guess is as good as mine, because I have no ****ing idea whatsoever. Microsoft claim Groove is a "peer-to-peer collaboration solution", which has left me only slight more enlightened than before. Onenote's supposed to be pretty good, though.

I have to ask, what's so good about an office produce that makes it worth more than a grand Ultimate is $590 in US dollars, the article was in Australian dollars.

Now all that remains

[GFree]

is for Windows Defender in Vista to stuff up and flag IE7 as spyware. That would be most amusing. :)

This shows it's working

[Rix]

No jabbing at MS intended. Something like this *should* generate more false positives than false negatives, because the cost to the user from a false positive is less than a false negative. Further, it shows that they aren't playing favourites, they've been caught in the same net anyone else might.

A $1200 product being sold for $75 is probably either a) not a $1200 product, or b) a scam, so this seems to have worked well. Special academic discounts are a fringe case.

Re:Does it ....

[snicho99]

Amen brother.

No one out there really seems to get it. Fosters - goes in the same category with Rolf Harris, Steve Irwin (god bless him) and Crocodile Dundee:

Shit we foist on other people.

Re:Does it ....

[mollymoo]

Thank you very much for making me laugh. Your post is funny. Period.

You're using Vista's speech recognition, right?

Probbably deliberate

[MikShapi]

They probably left in in the anti-phishing filter deliberately. Irony generates news, and news generate truckloads of free exposure.

"Any publicity is good publicity, as long as they spell my name right"

We all think it's ironic that MS software blocks an MS promotion campaign. We generated a truckload of comments laughing our asses off.
The REAL irony that escapes us is that we gentoo- and ubuntu- running geeks all talk about it, laugh about it, tell our friends, family and collegues in the office about it, and get the word out to a lot of people, a decent percentage of which (who have student IDs in AU and/or access to someone with such) will hear "blah blah office 2k7 ultimate for 75A$ blah blah microsoft blooper blah". And guess what those of them who use office and can do the math will do then.

Thus, thanks to us slashdot crowd, myself being a gentoo-desktop-running Aussie student (who also runs Windows on some of his machines) who is neither religious about being anti-microsoft nor thinks they do not deserve a sane amount of money for a software suite I wish to use, I promptly went out and paid microsoft 75$. Good'on'em.

And looking back at our beloved slashdot crowd, I think that I, for one, welcome our new microsoft-promoting slashdotter overlords.

Re:Does it ....

[morethanapapercert]

And if you had watched a Coors commercial or read a Coors label, it also would have appeared to have been brewed in Canada. For most "imported" beers available in Canada, it does not make sense to ship large quantities of cans or (fragile) bottles from one country to another. Beer goes bad rather quickly when traveling in uneven temps like you find on board ship.* Instead, foreign brewers that make popular swill ^h^h^h^h beer will license the name and various copyrighted logos etc to a local/domestic brewer who makes the actual product using local water, barley, hops and so on. Here in Ontario Budweiser and Stella Artois are brewed by Labatt's while Coors Lite and Corona Extra are brewed by Molson's under license. Many of the better foreign beers are actually imported since the better quality can command a higher price, high enough to make importing the comparative small numbers profitable.

Check out www.labatt.com and www.molson.com for more info (warning, the Labatt site has an annoying and worthless age check. Feel free to lie, I did ;) ) *I'm told that trying to ship beer long ways with inadequate refrigeration is behind the origin of the various India Pale Ales. During the early days of British colonialism in places like India, the British Empire shipped large amounts of beer to the colonies. Lagers, Porters and Stouts tend to go bad the quickest when warm, so brewers came up with a pale beer that traveled well and was very refreshing to dry throats despite being shipped in unrefrigerated cargo holds for weeks.

Re:Does it ....

[asavage]

Even if it says imported it might not be imported from where you think. Some European beers sold in Canada are brewed in USA and vice versa so they can label them as imported. The way the British modified beer to last longer was increase the alcohol and hops. India Pale Ale still is high in hops but not alcohol.