What's In Steve Ballmer's Inbox?

Barence writes "When Microsoft last year launched Outlook.com, the company carelessly left the SteveBallmer@Outlook.com address vacant. It was snapped up by the editor of PC Pro, giving an insight into the type of emails the public sends to the Microsoft CEO. Among the messages sent to the account are complaints about the Windows 8 interface, a plea from someone who was 'literally driven crazy' by Windows Server product keys, and someone who wants Windows Phone's calendar to remind him when he's being paid. There's also a more sinister complaint from someone who claims they were the victim of racial discrimination when applying for a job at a Microsoft Store."

Comments

duh

[Anonymous Coward]

ikea adverts. He has to replace chairs.

Re:duh

[Anonymous Coward]

IKEA furniture is so flimsy it breaks apart when you pick it up, so you can't really throw it.

Re:duh

[Anonymous Coward]

Not everyone is over 350lbs and lives in their parents' basement. Ok, everyone here does, but not everyone. Ikea is fine for them.

Re:duh

[ArsenneLupin]

Not everyone is over 350lbs

He wasn't speaking about sitting on a chair, but about throwing it. You know, like Steve Ballmer does...

Re:duh

[pwizard2]

Ikea is fine for them.

You mean, it's fine if you like shitty pseudo-furniture. If you want good stuff, go antiquing or bring odds and ends home from yard sales and restore them.

Re:duh

[FatdogHaiku]

IKEA furniture is so flimsy it breaks apart when you pick it up, so you can't really throw it.

That's why you leave it in the box!
This also results in better aerodynamics, longer flights, and higher impact energies...

Re:duh

[Anonymous Coward]

Whoosh!

The joke went right over your head. ...and nice try Ikea salesperson.

Re:duh

[Applekid]

Not everyone is over 350lbs

He wasn't speaking about sitting on a chair, but about throwing it. You know, like Steve Ballmer does...

Well, ok. The typical slashdotter doesn't have the strength to throw a chair.

Windoh's 8

[davydagger]

"Three out of the four genuine emails I’ve received for Mr Ballmer could be classified as complaints, or “constructive feedback” if you’re being generous. "

Stick a fork in it, its done. The curse of the even number'ed windows version lives on.

Re:Windoh's 8

[SJHillman]

I thought 98 and 2000 were decent OSes. 95, however, had some issues. Also, how do you determine if Vista, XP, Me, NT and CE are even or odd numbered? You can't go by the marketing name. And you can't go by the internal version number, as Vista and 7 are both version 6 (8 may be as well, I haven't looked).

Re:Windoh's 8

[slashmydots]

And every other version of Office, Visual Studio, and everything else they've ever released. We learned about the "Microsoft cycle" as a legitimate thing in college. They release something actually good, people buy it, and MS thinks they're invincible. Then they do something unpopular and experimental and think they can get away with it because their sales on the last version were unstoppable. Then it fails miserably, everyone gets fired, and they release something the customers actually want. I have a feeling that Windows 9 is going to end this cycle though because it sounds like it will be awful.

Re:Windoh's 8

[TWX]

Woosh!

Re:Windoh's 8

[Tridus]

Not really, because his whole point is that this odd/even version thing doesn't apply to Windows very well unless you use a lot of contortions to try and make it fit.

There's good versions, and bad versions. They don't follow much of a pattern except that the good versions are usually refinements of a bad version rather than a major change.

Re:Windoh's 8

[Anonymous Coward]

I would go so far as to say the curse of windows version lives on....
Windows is windows, you never get what you think your paying for. It never works the way it should and you always have to add different ways to make it work...

Re:Windoh's 8

[loufoque]

You seem to have problems with HTML entities.

Re:Windoh's 8

[M0j0_j0j0]

Call the HTML Police!

Re:Windoh's 8

[jones_supa]

Maybe /. does not allow those. For a change someone tried to use real quote characters instead of the inch symbol.

Re:Windoh's 8

[Inda]

Give the man a break. He only copied and pasted from TFA.

Re:Windoh's 8

[loufoque]

He should have known slashdot doesn't handle non-ASCII characters well (this website is so technically bugged it's not even funny), and should have avoided their use.

Re:Windoh's 8

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't me bro!

Re:Windoh's 8

[Goodyob]

All these puns! Someone needs to take a

Re:Windoh's 8

[jones_supa]

Give the man a break. He only copied and pasted from TFA.

Hey, I'm not accusing him. I specifically pointed out that the problem is probably rather in the Slashdot engine.

Re:Windoh's 8

[Anonymous Coward]

Are you trying to say that 0x60 is not a fucking ASCII character? GTFO this site.

Re:Windoh's 8

[ArsenneLupin]

Actually, with Windows, both the even and the odd versions are bad. As are the non-numerical versions...

Re:Windoh's 8

[SleazyRidr]

There's good versions, and bad versions. They don't follow much of a pattern except that the good versions are usually refinements of a bad version rather than a major change.

That leads to the good/bad pattern. 95 was bad, then 98 was a refinement which was good. ME was bad then XP was the refinement that was good. Vista was bad, then 7 was the refinement that was good. 8 is bad so maybe soon we'll get a refinement that is good.

Re:Windoh's 8

[ArsenneLupin]

Woosh! These are "smart quotes"...

Re:Windoh's 8

[Anonymous Coward]

I think you accidentally a word.

Re:Windoh's 8

[ottothecow]

Except that XP was a refinement of 2000, which was an iteration of NT (both of which were "good"). ME was a de-refinement of 98. And arguably...95 wasn't that bad. It was a pretty big departure from anything else, but was it really any worse than 3.1? Sure, 98 was way better, but so was everything else from that time...98 was a time of DVDs and USB and high speed internet proliferation. 95 was an OS for piles of systems with a CD-Rom, a maybe-56k modem, and a serial port.

But yes, it still holds that for the consumer OSs, 98, ME, XP, Vista, 7, 8, has a pretty obvious pattern of which versions are going to be bad.

Zzzzzz

[Anonymous Coward]

I can't believe they let him keep it!

Re:Zzzzzz

[dimeglio]

Why not? There are more than just one Steve Ballmer on this planet no doubt.

Re:Zzzzzz

[Nyder]

Why not? There are more than just one Steve Ballmer on this planet no doubt.

I get the impression that Steve Ballmer either eats them, or kills them (probably via chair).

Maybe it's Gabe from Valve who eats his name clones, I don't know.

Re:Zzzzzz

[MrNiceguy_KS]

Why not? There are more than just one Steve Ballmer on this planet no doubt.

I get the impression that Steve Ballmer either eats them, or kills them (probably via chair).

Steve cuts off their heads to take their power as his own.

And?

[Joehonkie]

So it's just like any other CEO's public inbox, then?

Another view; a catch-all inbox

[Lieutenant_Dan]

I have a catch-all inbox that I use for various disposable e-mails. It's a popular domain.

In a typical week I get:
- 10+ people trying (and succeeding) creating FB accounts plus any updates and invites and comments and ...
- ~5 e-mails from Gmail to activate an account
- ~5 e-mails from Windows Live to activate an account
- two library notifications about overdue books
- a backup of the financial database from a company that has set the incorrect e-mail
- Someone sending baby pictures of their newborn child to a co-worker to a similarly-named company
- ~4 e-mails from patients for another similarly-named clinic
- One or two e-mails from an insurance company with confidential data sent to the incorrect domain
- LOTS of e-mails from people signing up on web sites that don't verify e-mails (horroscopes, matching sites, industrial newsletters, etc)

Xmas was pretty busy with a lot of kids registering WIndows Live accounts for their XBOX.
Out of courtesy I usually tell people that they have the wrong domain ...

Re:Another view; a catch-all inbox

[drinkypoo]

Some sites apparently don't know that email addresses at gmail strip dots before delivery. Some guy registered his Apple account with the dotless form of my address. Now it's my account. What's hilarious is that you can set an address as your primary without verifying it.

Re:Another view; a catch-all inbox

[Anonymous Coward]

The dots are part of the rfc, IIRC.

Most mail systems (actually, I've only run into Exchange not conforming) allow you to receive some.body@domain.com (or s.o.m.e.body@domain.com), because the dots are not counted. You can also append a plus symbol and another string (again, not with Exchange) like som.ebody+paypal@domain.com and then perform filtering at the email reader.

You can use these techniques to identify who sold your email address. joe+netflix@domain, joe+uhaul@domain...

Works with gmail and other standards compliant email systems.

Re:Another view; a catch-all inbox

[Anonymous Coward]

I had a catchall for a "two lettter" domain name (xy.com, for letters not x and y)
that I got in 1993, and sold two years ago for the big bucks.

The amount of junk mail I got was insane, roughly 100MB every two hours.
(The time it took to fill it.) Lots and lots of junk mail. A surprising number of
e-mails from corporate mailing lists (including internal e-mails from a major
aerospace manufacturer). Lots and lots of 419 e-mails. Lots of e-mails
concerning Michael Jackson (both before and after he died). A *lot* of
resumes (a major temp/placement service has a similar address beginning
with xy).

A huge number of e-mails clearly intended for xy.edu (which was a modestly
sized university). A few e-mails intended for xy.org. Some e-mails apparently
misdirected from a gay swinger to his buddies. Lots of personal e-mails of
varied origin. Lots of misdirected flames.

After a few attempts to let various individuals know that perhaps they didn't
want to be sending sensitive e-mails to the domain, I gave up -- both the
volume of misdirected e-mail and the volume/hysteria/general-crazy of the
indignant replies threatening lawsuits for reading their *personal* e-mails and
accusing me of all manner of illicit skullduggery were insane. (Apparently
considering the idea that they might not actually want xy.com on any of their
mailing lists, and might correct same was not a possibility to be realistically
considered.)

Re:Another view; a catch-all inbox

[stillnotelf]

I've found most of the places where I'd want to use stillnotelf+maybebadguy@gmail... don't usually accept the plus sign in the email address. I can't tell if they aren't standards-compliant because they're lazy and ignorant, or as a deliberate ploy to prevent filtering...

Re:Another view; a catch-all inbox

[DigiShaman]

If you're using msmith@insert_your_domain.com, you're doing it wrong!

Re:Another view; a catch-all inbox

[omnichad]

It seems you don't know what a catch-all inbox is.

Re:Another view; a catch-all inbox

[DigiShaman]

msmith@insert_your_domain.com is a catch all! j/k

In all seriousness, I don't use a catch-all. Because none of the messages bounce back as undeliverable, it just builds up a worthless legitimate list for spammers around the world. Unless things have changed and you can both receive via catch-all and forge a false undeliverable, I'd rather not pollute my domain.

Re:Another view; a catch-all inbox

[MrNiceguy_KS]

What's hilarious is that you can set an address as your primary without verifying it.

I can confirm that Sony's PSN and Match.com both have the same problem. My gmail account is first-initial-last-name@gmail.com, and I have a fairly uncommon last name. That address was used to register for both; the first by somebody named Jared and the second by a mid-60's woman from North Carolina. In both cases, attempts to alert customer service just led to canned responses, though Match.com did at least give me an option to disable email communication. (Which was a Godsend after 3 days of e-flirting from older men.)

Match.com was particularly bad. Not only did they not verify the email address, the initial sign-up email included both the user name and password. I had full access to the account. (And I'll admit, the call of the Dark Side was strong. But, as I said, I have an uncommon last name, so she was probably distantly related to me.)

Re:Another view; a catch-all inbox

[SgtAaron]

In all seriousness, I don't use a catch-all. Because none of the messages bounce back as undeliverable, it just builds up a worthless legitimate list for spammers around the world. Unless things have changed and you can both receive via catch-all and forge a false undeliverable, I'd rather not pollute my domain.

I don't see that it matters. Spammers, in my experience, rarely send with a valid return address, even if it looks legit. Say, like, bounce-12345-user+domain.com@spammerdomain.com. And weeding their lists doesn't seem to be a priority. If I were to look in our mail logs right now, I'd no doubt see
thousands of spam mails per day sent to addresses that haven't existed for YEARS. My own address was unused for more than 3 years, and after
I activated it again (came back to work here, iow), I received new spam within seconds.

Re:Another view; a catch-all inbox

[DigiShaman]

Well yes. But once your on the shit list of many spammers, you don't get off them. So if spammers for the most part never receive NDRs, many will assume it's an active account and blow more crap your way. Filtering out this junk consumes both CPU cycles and more importantly bandwidth. If I'm going to host my own private (read small) email server, I'd rather not redirect my MX records to a 3rd party mail scrubber.

Re:Another view; a catch-all inbox

[blackwizard]

Nah. If it was a deliberate ploy they could just strip off the "+whatever" portion and send to your actual gmail account, thus defeating you in a (possibly untraceable, depending on their actions) way.

Simple.

[Anonymous Coward]

- Dead Puppy recipes
- Daily order form for new chairs
- Human rights complains from 66% of employees
- Micro$oft detractor rendition list
- List of endangered wildlife to hunt by explosives

Lenthening pelvic protrusions...

[jkrise]

and inducing mammary hyperplasia should be the biggest items I'd imagine. And I'd like to believe Steve benefited from the latter category or emails...

Don't forget..

[Striikerr]

Lots of SPAM advertising Dancing Monkey Man brand Anti-Persperants (Zoo Strength). For those on the go who feel the need to jump around on stage like an angry gorilla but don't want to be embarrassed by sweat marks..

Re:Don't forget..

[Anonymous Coward]

someone mod this gentleman up, please.

Re:Shocker.

[TWX]

Eh, could be worse. At least they knew that Ballmer as theoretical head of the operations of the company now should be the ultimate, "buck stops here," person, as opposed to still spamming Bill while he's off in Africa fighting mosquitoes.

A friend of mine registered "spam@[university]" and "abuse@[university]" while we were at school, they allowed students to have up to seven of them for some odd reason, and he got some funny e-mail. Nothing so bad as to justify forwarding it along to actual school IT administration, but amusing nonetheless.

wat chewer takes care of product keys

[Anonymous Coward]

speaks for itself.

Reminds me of back in the day

[axl917]

I once worked for a university IT department, where a lot of us still retained our old "not everyone needs e-mail" addresses well in to the late 90's, such as simple tom@school.edu, bob@school.edu, and so on. One day our rather red-faced director, "Steve", came out to us and said it may be time for everyone to adopt the current "jsmith" standard, and told how a young woman on campus had just sent a quite amorous e-mail to her boyfriend, also name of "Steve", but she only put his first name in the To: field.

Re:Reminds me of back in the day

[Anonymous Coward]

That's a feature not a bug.

Anyway many universities give students email usernames that are probably harder to guess than typical student passwords - letters plus numbers ;).

Re:Reminds me of back in the day

[Anonymous Coward]

(In case you didn't realise, your email address is visible.)

Re:Reminds me of back in the day

[Anonymous Coward]

My school did it first initial, last name, major and then a sequential number, followed by a check digit. Joe Smith, the 23rd computer science major with that name, and the check digit of 8 would have the email address JsmithCS238@school.edu. It was so bad that my neighbor in the dorm was TnguyenEE7246@school.edu. It was not uncommon to email people in the high thousands or tens; I can't remember anyone off hand that was in the middle.

Re:Reminds me of back in the day

[kleinesRaedchen]

The policy in our university IT department was "login equals lastname" unless that one was already taken. (In that case, one or more letters of the firstname were prefixed.) Check and generation of accounts were performed by a home-brewn script. That script, however, did not check against system accounts. One day, a newly registered student, Miss Root, got a very special account ...

Re:Reminds me of back in the day

[Anonymous Coward]

Bull. It had to check for existing accounts.

Re:Reminds me of back in the day

[axl917]

I am well-aware my e-mail is visible, I have never been much into identity-shielding. A few of us reverted back to our old handles once that director left. :)

Ballmer's Inbox

[sl4shd0rk]

From: Jsvalbreijkaloua@ikea.com
Subject: Holiday Sale - Select Chairs 75% Off

From: amanda.good@monster.com
Subject: Developers! Developers! Developers!

From: rstallman@fsf.org
Subject: RE: UEFI - See you in court.

From: j.allen@rbc.com
Subject: SCO still alive!?! Please wire more money!

From: bgates@microsoft.com
Subject: Dude, wtf windows 8? Investors want to know.

From: Larry.Page@gmail.com
Subject: Windows Phone LOLOLOL

From: rvstrejklisauke@nokia.com
Subject: RE:Meeting with Larry Page - not so good

Re:Ballmer's Inbox

[jkrise]

From: rvstrejklisauke@nokia.com
Subject: RE:Meeting with Larry Page - not so good

A bit cryptic. I thought a better one from nokia:

From: stephenelop@nokia.com
Subject: Mission accomplished, awaiting further orders...

Re:Ballmer's Inbox

[bemymonkey]

Nicely done, the whole office is rolling around on the floor laughing... :)

Re:Ballmer's Inbox

[Anonymous Coward]

From: microsofthr@microsoft.com
Subject: Your Rating of 5 and What It Means

Worked out for them

[T.E.D.]

Just by getting their complaints published, emailing to the fake Ballmer was probably far more effective than emailing to the real one would have been.

Re:Worked out for them

[Keith111]

Particularily since only a moron would think SteveBallmer@outlook.com is his actual email address. It was left open because @outlook.com is a public email address, same as @hotmail.com. I'm sure whoever owns SteveBallmer@hotmail.com got the dumbest people around emailing them when hotmail came out too :P (this post is not the opinion of microsoft or steveballmer)

Re:Worked out for them

[T.E.D.]

After thinking about it, we should all try this. Everyone with a complaint about Microsoft, just go ahead and email it to "Fake Steve Ballmer" <SteveBallmer@Outlook.com>

My first complaint will be about the low-contrast microfiche-sized install keys they use on the Windows 8 install media...

Re:Worked out for them

[mu51c10rd]

I'm sure whoever owns SteveBallmer@hotmail.com got the dumbest people around emailing them when hotmail came out too :P

Actually, only smart people were on the internet in 1996...oh wait...AOL was much bigger back then.

Re:Worked out for them

[bill_mcgonigle]

Yeah, this e-mail sample represents only people who randomly send email to addresses they make up and hope for the best (and spend actual time doing so).

Re:Shocker.

[Anonymous Coward]

So, what is his real email address? Can you point to some official source that confirms it?

the real story here

[nimbius]

is how the editor of PC Pro cant seem to get invited to anymore of these events.

Re:Shocker.

[andy.ruddock]

He should have pointed the university admin to RFC2142 then - abuse@[anywhere] shouldn't be available for anybody other than the network admins.

Re:Shocker.

[jones_supa]

steve.ballmer@microsoft.com

The truth hurts...

[dclozier]

It's actually steve.ballmer@gmail.com ;)

Re:Shocker.

[Inda]

Haven't we all done this at some point?

I did it for a local football club who wouldn't stop sending me SMS texts.

After the third attempt, I received two 'out of office' replies and knew I'd hit the jackpot. That taught me a big lesson about setting those damn things. I learnt that jane.bloggs@footballclub.com was on maternity leave and joe.bloggs@footballclub.com was out of the country for the rest of the week. Joe was high up in the company and probably had nice stuff in his house.

The SMS texts stopped. Job done for the price of three emails, and a name-scrape from a website.

Seriously?

[Opportunist]

People write THE HEAD HONCHO of a multinational corporation with their (in his eyes most certainly seen as) petty complaints about the OS his company makes? Do they REALLY think that he wastes a nanosecond reading them? That he himself does actually care what they think of his product?

Is that the same kind of people who want to talk to "the manager", thinking that he gives half a shit about their ramblings?

Re:Seriously?

[Nyder]

People write THE HEAD HONCHO of a multinational corporation with their (in his eyes most certainly seen as) petty complaints about the OS his company makes? Do they REALLY think that he wastes a nanosecond reading them? That he himself does actually care what they think of his product?

Is that the same kind of people who want to talk to "the manager", thinking that he gives half a shit about their ramblings?

I found via my life that people will complain about anything to someone that is in charge of whatever. They will bitch about everything. Most people seem to be whiny bitches that have to get their way with everything and don't care about others.

Plus most the public is pretty stupid.

Re:Seriously?

[Anonymous Coward]

Is that the same kind of people who want to talk to "the manager", thinking that he gives half a shit about their ramblings?

I've never seen anyone who complained to a manager not get what they want (and most of the time they shouldn't be getting what they want, because they were wrong in the first place). Typically, they actually get more than they asked for...they get an apology, and often whatever they were buying for free.

If you think the people in charge have no interest in their customers, you're the moron.

Re:Seriously?

[Opportunist]

Depends on the person in charge and the customer. If that customer is someone who spends half a fortune and then some on my goods and complains about a store clerk bumping into him and then being an ass towards him, I will very much offer him an apology and demand one from the clerk in question, as well as some kind of goodie to get him back on my good side.

If it's the average high-complaint idiot that buys a 2.99 item from the bargain bin and feels entitled by that investment to be carried around by my employees on a golden throne, I kick him out with the request to shop at my competitor.

Re:Seriously?

[GizmoToy]

While there may have been others before him, I suspect this is gaining in popularity because it's now pretty well-known that Steve Jobs routinely replied to emails sent to his Apple email address (either personally, our through their executive support team). Complaining to steve@apple.com got your problem at least looked at by someone with some authority. Tim Cook has continued this, though to a somewhat lesser extent.

It's not terribly surprising that behavior is spilling over into other companies now.

Re:Seriously?

[u38cg]

Complaining to a senior company executive can be a very effective tool. One, most people these days read their own email. Two, they have PAs who can do stuff. I've done it a couple of times when I've run out of other options, and saved a lot of bother.

Re:Seriously?

[Anonymous Coward]

I got an email from Woz after complaining about being spammed by Apple (a long long time ago, don't try this now). I sent complaints to every e-mail on the domain listing. I never expected he would really receive it.

There are lots of stories about people writing CEO's to get results. Often a CEO doesn't know middle management is royally screwing over customers and complaints starting at the bottom get no where. Still, it's far better to write than e-mail.

I've only asked to talk to a manager a few times in my life. The one time that didn't work, I called the corporate office.

Just like everyone else

[alex67500]

Enlarge your penis!

re: Your Shooshtime Account

[Anonymous Coward]

Dear Steve.

Please note that your credit card ending in 8333 is no longer working. If you'd like to regain access to your Shoostime account please provide us with a new billing credit card.

Remember. Unlike Microsoft. Shoosh gets you off!!

In my best Scottish brogue, I hope it is

[mark_reh]

"a great steaming load o' shite!"

I happen to like Windows 8

[Anonymous Coward]

i happen to like Windows 8, is clean, fast and stable, of course, there are some minor issues, mostly with drivers, but it's spected as it has been released a couple of months ago, but i'd definitely like it more if i could have the start button just like the "Developers Preview" version did, that's for sure

Don't Knock it

[Anonymous Coward]

I once had a problem with Cisco. I received a incomplete kit (Cisco ACE LB) from a which only ships from the USA. On the second try Cisco sent me another incomplete kit. Meanwhile this was dragging on for weeks and my local (Israel) distributor claimed he was helpless and it was in Cisco's hands.

1) Call Cisco Israel - get automatically patched into the Cisco switchboard in Ireland and was told that they could only direct my call to a person not to the GM of Cisco Israel

2) Google "Cisco Israel GM"

3) Call again and ask for the name I got from Google. Get patched in no questions asked.

4) GM's PA picks up and I nicely tell her that actually I wanted to talk to her. "Hi this is my story, please tell your boss. thank you"

5) ????????

6) Get a call a few days later from Cisco USA from someone who is in a position to ship me a new kit the same day

7) Profit !!!

Moral of the story - if you have a legitimate complaint/request and present it in a acceptable manner you have a good chance that the senior person you contaced will take a personal interest and you will get results.

Does anyone have any other stories where they contacted senior management from a big company and got a response ?

P.S After this experience I would never buy anything from Cisco again outside of a router or switch and even then only if it was a popular model

Re:Don't Knock it

[Captain Segfault]

This is a standard strategy, which I've seen referred to as "turboing", which is particularly effective when standard channels fail. The key point is that, really, you're not trying to speak to senior management, you're trying to speak to the PA of someone in senior management.

sjobs@apple = Executive Relations

[Anonymous Coward]

It was an open secret that mail sent to sjobs@apple.com would be read by Apple Executive Relations, a sort of last-resort customer feedback team.

Sometimes, if they thought you had a legitimate issue, they'd actually get to Steve Jobs, and sometimes, he'd actually reply. (Often, quite bluntly.) Somewhat more often, they'd escalate a case with AppleCare or the Genius Bar for you. The rest of the time, you'd just be directed back to the normal channel.

I have no idea if the practice continues under Apple's current Great Leader.

Say what you will about Apple being a freedom-hating customer-hostile totalitarian cult, they at least have no shortage of actual, US-English-speaking humans for you to rant and rave at. Try getting a hold one of those at Google or Microsoft sometime.

Re:sjobs@apple = Executive Relations

[ScarKnee]

I have no idea if the practice continues under Apple's current Great Leader.

Apparently, it still is:

In a recent interview with Business Week, Tim Cook said the practice is still in-place and even mentioned that he feels privileged to communicate with Apple's customers in this way. Here is a link to the story:

http://tinyurl.com/azzzbhy (BusinessWeek via TinyURL)

"Smart Quotes" not so

[Thud457]

every time I read "smart quotes", I picture Doctor Evil making "air quotes".

isn't this act a crime?

[bloodhawk]

Didn't someone get done for some criminal charge about interception of mail intended for someone else not that long ago by registering names similar to those in a company to intercept misspelled mail addresses. Isn't what PC Pro is doing here, while amusing, the exact same crime? He has registered an address with the intention of intercepting mail incorrectly addressed to someone else?

Re:isn't this act a crime?

[twokay]

I remember a story about a security company that did this for banks and fortune 500 companies, off the back of reports that "hackers" were using typos in email addresses to get all sorts of lovely information about the IT systems of these companies

I don't remember whether it was criminalized, but it's certainly a good example of why you shouldn't be sending sensitive information in plain text emails...