Spam Clock Ticking For Bill Gates

from the friendly-reminders dept

At the end of January 2004, Bill Gates was talking about tackling spam and said that within two years, it would be "solved". We checked in earlier this year, and he didn't seem to have made much of an impact, and it certainly doesn't look like spam's going anywhere. So, hopefully ol' Bill's got a lot of free time over the holidays, because he's got 36 days to stop spam. Somebody put the coffee on for him.
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  • identicon
    danielle, 19 Dec 2005 @ 11:31am

    Microsoft IS spam

    Bill Gates CAN make a huge impact on SPAM in a short amount of time!

    Shutdown msn hotmail! Earlier today I checked an IP address on a scamspam wanting to give me a few million $$$...

    The address was registered to Microsoft and had been blacklisted several times in the past month, the most recent being today!

    link to this | view in chronology ]

    • identicon
      Anonymous Coward, 19 Dec 2005 @ 11:46am

      Re: Microsoft IS spam

      What is is that you say? People really do not want "free" viagra? :P

      link to this | view in chronology ]

    • identicon
      Kirby, 20 Dec 2005 @ 1:31pm

      Re: Microsoft IS spam

      By the way, very little of the 'spam' that has a 'From' of hotmail.com actually goes through microsoft-owned servers.

      It's all 'forged' email going through open relays, usually in foreign countries like China. The spammers use free mail systems like hotmail and yahoo to collect feedback, or more likely, to never check but have something valid-looking for the recieving mail server. Hotmail has about as much power to do anything about this as you do to stop a Volcano in Asia from erupting.

      I used to work anti-spam for WebTV. We'd occasionally see reports of WebTV boxes 'spamming', but since they aren't actually running a commercial OS (like a windows), and had no hard drive, it was, to put it mildly, extremely difficult to actually send spam from one of these in any sort of bulk fashion. And the messages we did get a hold of were all forged - you can see the actual delivery path in the full headers.

      MS may be one of the most 'evil' companies ever, I wouldn't disagree, but you can't really blame much of the spam problem on them, particularly not the hotmail division.

      link to this | view in chronology ]

  • identicon
    Sohrab, 19 Dec 2005 @ 8:43pm

    No Subject Given

    yea, its weird. ive been getting alot of spam on my hotmail latly too. not as much on my Yahoo. None on my .Mac :)

    link to this | view in chronology ]

  • identicon
    Anonymous Coward, 20 Dec 2005 @ 4:09am

    Not surprisiing

    This is not surprising. Microsoft itself spams
    (see Usenet's news.admin.net-abuse.email) for
    examples; they host thousands of spammer domains
    (at MSN); they host tens of thousands of spammer
    dropboxes (at Hotmail); and they are one of the backers
    of completely idiotic "authentication" schemes
    that have zero anti-spam value, and are, of course,
    merely thinly-veiled attempts to assert control
    over email.

    link to this | view in chronology ]

  • identicon
    sharp, 20 Dec 2005 @ 6:25am

    No Subject Given

    *bill gates* QUICK GIVE ME YOUR EMAILS to uh stop spamming...yeah...comon i know you want viagra ;)

    link to this | view in chronology ]

  • identicon
    knight37, 20 Dec 2005 @ 12:48pm

    Give Bill a Break

    He probably thought 2 years would be enough time for Microsoft to TAKE OVER THE INTERNETS! If he were in complete control he could stop spam. It's all you people's fault for not handing over control of the internets to Bill!!

    link to this | view in chronology ]

  • identicon
    dario, 21 Jan 2006 @ 3:51am

    NewNetMail - new way to communicate

    Hello!!

    Introducing the world's first private email provider. At last - now you can send and receive communications over the internet, but without the problems of traditional email, and if you are in war against Spams Viruses and unwanted mails go to this web address its actualy invitation and you can get it only here ddobosic.newnetmail.com

    by

    link to this | view in chronology ]


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