Posted by Fred Humphries Managing Director, U.S. Government Affairs
Last night, an important audience experienced Microsoft’s commitment to ensuring that children use digital media and video games in safer, healthier, and more balanced ways. The audience was the U.S. Congress.
In cooperation with Reps. Mike Rogers (R-MI), Bobby Scott (D-VA), John Shimkus (R-IL), and Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-FL), Microsoft and the Get Game Smart program hosted Capitol Hill Family Game Night. More than 150 members of Congress, staff and their family members were joined at this educational event by parents and children from the Boys & Girls Clubs of Greater Washington.
Posted by Nancy Anderson Corporate Vice President and Deputy General Counsel
This week the Obama Administration released the nation’s first-ever Joint Strategic Plan on Intellectual Property Enforcement. Joining Vice President Joe Biden and U.S. Intellectual Property Enforcement Coordinator Victoria Espinel in announcing the plan were Attorney General Eric Holder, Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano, U.S. Trade Representative Ron Kirk, and Commerce Secretary Gary Locke. The plan demonstrates the Administration’s strong commitment to protecting intellectual property and promoting job creation and growth. Microsoft is pleased to support it.
As the Joint Strategic Plan recognizes, “Intellectual property supports jobs across all industries, and in particular where there is a high degree of creativity, research and innovation.” A prime example is the software industry, which has been a remarkable engine for jobs and economic growth. According to the Business Software Alliance, the software and related services sector employed almost 2 million people in the United States in 2007, in jobs that paid 195 percent of the average wage. The sector contributed more than $261 billion to U.S. GDP in 2007, making it the largest of the U.S. copyright industries, and its overseas earnings added a $37 billion surplus to the U.S. balance of trade in 2009.
Posted by Patrick Brazel CEO of Zignals
(Cross posted from The Official Microsoft Blog)
In 2008, the financial markets changed fundamentally and completely. The causes will be debated and they of course predate the collapse. But there is no argument that the summer of 2008 is when the market certainties that had prevailed since 1945 evaporated.
It was at this time that my business partner and I had been working on a plan to address what we saw as a huge gap in the financial market. We saw a need to empower individual investors with the online capabilities that were available only to professional or major institutions. At the same time, we wanted to create opportunities for a new class of researchers to earn from its expertise by being paid for the strategies it creates and publishes.
We believed strongly that the model had to change — something different was needed. We had a compelling idea and a strong plan, but were searching for the technology to lift it off the ground.
Around that time, while attending an event hosted by Enterprise Ireland the economic development arm of the Irish government, I was introduced to Microsoft’s IP Ventures program. We learned that IP Ventures identifies innovative technology developed at Microsoft, and provides it to interested entrepreneurs like us to start new businesses. We brought the idea and our financial services experience to the table, and after approving our plans, IP Ventures gave us access to IP assets, as well as the support and business guidance we needed to help us develop our idea into something concrete.
Posted by John Scarrow General Manager of Safety Services
Last week the Microsoft Digital Crimes Unit filed a lawsuit in U.S. District Court under the federal CAN-SPAM Act against the perpetrators of what we believe to be one of the largest-ever spam attacks on Windows Live Hotmail. The lawsuit –Microsoft Corporation v. Boris Mizhen, et al. – alleges defendants engaged in an elaborate scheme to evade Microsoft’s filters by abusing Microsoft’s Junk E-Mail Reporting Program (JMRP) and Smart Network Data Services (SNDS) to send vast quantities of spam each day. JMRP and SNDS are free services designed to help protect Windows Live Hotmail customers from spam by encouraging people to report it and to help improve our spam filters by identifying legitimate mail as such.
In our lawsuit, we allege that defendants opened millions of Hotmail e-mail accounts and hired people to manually identify spam mails as legitimate mails in order to trick Hotmail into classifying spam as legitimate mail. Such actions undermine the measures we’ve put in place to protect people. We take this abuse very seriously, and while Hotmail and our SmartScreen filter continue to work to block spam from this identified scheme, we’ll keep investigating and pursuing spam attacks to protect our network and our customers.
Posted by Nancy Anderson Corporate Vice President and Deputy General Counsel Today in Washington, DC, the National Cyber-Forensics and Training Alliance (NCFTA) and other leading industry and consumer protection organizations are announcing the worldwide launch of Internet Fraud Alert. It’s a new program to help make the Internet a safer and more productive place for consumers and businesses.
Through a centralized alert system powered by Microsoft technology and managed by NCFTA, Internet Fraud Alert provides a new, powerful tool to quickly inform financial and online companies about compromised customer account credentials (such as online usernames and passwords) or stolen credit card numbers. With this information, institutions can take action to protect their customers from further fraud against their accounts.
The effects of fraud can be devastating to people and the financial and online institutions whose services they use. Last year, according to the Anti-Phishing Working Group, one million U.S. households lost money or had accounts misused as a result of phishing, at a cost of $650 million. APWG’s recent data suggests that phishers are exploiting more brands than ever before.
As online fraudsters become increasingly sophisticated in their endeavors, so too have public/private countermeasures. But we’re not yet as effective as we could be. For example, when compromised or stolen account information is uncovered, there is no easy way to determine the company responsible for the account or how best to report the problem – which wastes valuable time and resources.