Microsoft Tries To Silence Revelation Of Bing Cashback Flaws; Leads To Revelation Of Other Problems

from the touchy-microsoft dept

I'd been meaning to write this up for about a week, but finally got it around to it, just in time to add some additional info. First up, though, comes the news that Microsoft's legal department demanded a blogger remove a blog post about flaws in Bing's Cashback offer (Microsoft's attempt to bribe users to search via Bing instead of Google). One of the methods for the cashback offer involved pixel tracking, and blogger Samir Meghani noted that this was easily gamed to post fake transactions to your account. He also noted problems with the way Microsoft used sequential IDs, allowing potential scammers to "deny cashback rebates to legitimate users by using up available order ID numbers." Instead of dealing with these flaws, Microsoft lawyers sent a cease-and-desist and forced the blog post offline. I'm actually quite surprised this hasn't received a lot more attention.

In the legal nastygram, Microsoft's lawyers claimed that because Meghani had tested the flaws out himself, he was likely guilty of violating "various laws relating to computer intrusion, unauthorized access and unauthorized use of information," while suggesting that his actions could result in criminal charges. That's ridiculous, of course. He didn't actually scam the company -- he was just exposing a flaw. This is legal bullying to silence someone for pointing out a rather basic security flaw in Microsoft's program.

But, of course, even though Meghani was silenced on that issue, it doesn't mean he has to be silent on all of the flaws in Bing's Cashback program, so his latest (found via Slashdot) is that various retailers that offer "cashback" via Bing purchases are showing higher prices if you search via Bing. In fact, the price people can pay if they do certain searches on Bing is higher than if they'd gone direct:

So, if I go directly to butterflyphoto.com, I pay $699 with 0% cashback. If I use Bing Cashback, I pay $758 with 2% cashback, or $742.84. Using Bing cashback has actually cost me $43.84, giving an effective cashback rate of -6.27%. Yes, negative cashback! Is this legal? False advertising? I don't know, but it's pretty sketchy.

The problem doesn't end there. Using Bing has tainted my web browser. Butterfly Photo set a three month cookie on my computer to indicate that I came from Bing. Any product I look at for the next three months may show a different price than I'd get by going there directly. Just clicking a Bing link means three months of potentially negative cashback, without me ever realizing it. I'm actually afraid to use their service even just to write this, because it may cost me money in the future. If you've been thinking about trying out Bing Cashback, you may want to rethink that.

Microsoft responded and called this "an isolated instance" that it had missed with its tools that try to prevent merchants from gaming the system this way. Still, perhaps rather than sending out legal nastygrams and PR pablum to people discussing these things, Microsoft should focus on actually making sure that Bing's Cashback bribery program actually works correctly and safely.

Filed Under: bing, bribes, cashback, cease and desist, flaws, security
Companies: microsoft

Microsoft's Ad Agency Sued For Violating Product Placement Patent With Bing Ad

from the product-placement-patent?!?! dept

With the rise of the DVR and the death of the captive audience, it's no surprise that product placement has become more and more popular. But would you believe that ad agencies are trying to patent forms of product placement? Apparently, big ad firm WPP is being sued by a company for violating its patent in an ad campaign run for Microsoft's Bing search engine. The patent in question (6,859,936) is for "a method and system for producing program-integrated commercials." Basically, the idea is to use the actors and sets from a TV show to film a regular commercial spot, and then run that during the show itself. Yes, someone got a patent on that. Why? Who the hell knows. This is a perfect example, by the way, of how just because something's "new" it doesn't mean it's not obvious. It's just that it's so obvious most people wouldn't even bother thinking about patenting it.

Filed Under: bing, patents, product placement
Companies: microsoft, wpp

That's One Way To Grab Search Traffic

from the we've-got-porn! dept

When Microsoft launched its new Bing search engine recently, we didn't really know what to say about it. Some of us felt like Microsoft was trying to win the last battle against Google, rather than looking ahead to the next one; others pointed to pieces saying that Bing seemed more about knocking off Yahoo than Google, which it looks to have already done; others still pointed to all the next great search engines that have emerged over the years, and failed to unseat Google (remember Cuil?). But none of us mentioned Microsoft's apparent efforts to grab lots of search traffic by making Bing better at delivering porn results. There's been a minor flap over the way Bing displays videos in search results: users can access videos directly from the Bing site, and play a thumbnail version of them by putting their mouse over a preview image. This means that companies, schools or anybody else who wants to block the porn with web filters would have to block Bing completely (Microsoft has given a workaround, but it's pretty cumbersome). The uproar comes despite the fact that it's not all that different to the results delivered by other engines when searching for porn, although Bing seems to be a bit more, uh, comprehensive. While this sounds like a juicy mistake, the more cynical out there might see it as an intentional effort by Microsoft to grab search-engine market share by making Bing great for porn surfers. After all, it only delivers the videos -- and other sexual content -- to users from certain countries, so it seemingly is possible for Microsoft to keep at least some of it out. But with all the attention Bing's grabbed because of the uproar, and not to mention the traffic from porn surfers, it's hard to imagine they're too bothered.

Filed Under: bing, porn, search
Companies: microsoft