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Microsoft Blocking Pirate Bay Links In Messenger
RemyBR writes with an excerpt from an article at El Reg: "Microsoft has confirmed that users of its instant messaging app will not be able to send each other links to popular torrent site The Pirate Bay, citing malware fears. 'We block instant messages if they contain malicious or spam URLs based on intelligence algorithms, third-party sources, and/or user complaints. Pirate Bay URLs were flagged by one or more of these and were consequently blocked,' Redmond told The Register in an emailed statement."
Now Microsoft owns Skype, I wonder if they'll be applying the same intelligent algorithms to voice and video conversations.
Messenger usage must be diminishing, a lot of people seem to use Facebook for IM these days. Anyone more serious about IM who doesn't use Facebook probably uses a different network/client anyway. One which they do control.
MSN/Live Messenger, yes. It's incredibly popular in Asia, especially South Korea.
If you build it, nerds will come. Soylentnews.org
A lot of those who were using MSN have since moved to Skype, which is now also owned by MS...
Allthough MSN is still surprisingly big in terms of usage, hundreds of millions of active users according to ComScore and the like (much bigger than Skype), the real big trend is that the users moved to Facebook for what they used Messenger for (chatting and updates). And btw. Facebook Chat blocks Pirate Bay too. All the major IM services have been running automated malware blocks for a very long time. I'm surprised people are surprised that Pirate Bay is on the list (regardless whether you think it is "right" or not).
So they block URLs, marking them as spam. Use a URL shortener, like t.co / bit.ly / what.ever, so you can bypass the scheme.
No you don't, they actually resolve the target links, at least for the common URL shortener services. That said, it is not difficult to get past the block, and I don't think they even tried to make it hard, original intent was to protect normal users from getting malware, which was a big problem with IM earlier.
Facebook also blocks TPB links, and has for ages.
Microsoft and Facebook can do what they want - people can't complain too much, they are the company's networks after all, they can do what they want. But at least it's good in reminding people that their messages aren't private, and that there is going to be at least some automated checking of the contents before it's granted clearance to be sent through unaltered. If you really want to use an IM platform that's completely under your control (and not at the risk of censorship), then host your own XMPP server.
I remember when Linux was good... too...
TPB is infested with torrents that contain malware.
That may or may not be the case, but don't you think it is funny that now that tpb is becoming a legitimate source of music and video from independent artists, corporations with creative industry ties have starting unilaterally blocking tpb without worrying about the law?
I guess they don't mind free advertising, but they HATE competition.
You can never know everything, and part of what you do know will always be wrong. Perhaps even the most important part.
Part of the issue is that most users don't update their browser plugins. There has been a rash of Java exploits stemming from malicious code embedded in some banner ads (partly because users just don't update Java). The exploit causes redirection to another site and drive-by installation of malware.
TPB is serving whatever ads they get paid to serve and don't really care to identify and remove the malicious ones.
Or ... Microsoft could just fix their software.
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