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.
Posted by Peter Cullen Chief Privacy Strategist
I have been actively engaged in privacy issues for over a decade, first at the Royal Bank of Canada and now as Chief Privacy Strategist for Microsoft since 2003.
During that time privacy has rarely received as much attention as it’s getting now. Mainstream media from Good Morning America to USA Today regularly have stories about everything from shifting online privacy policies to unauthorized collections and use of personal data. At the same time, some in the tech industry have suggested that social networking and other new technologies are making privacy obsolete.
Given the high level of interest, I’m pleased to be in San Jose this afternoon to deliver the keynote address at the Computers, Freedom and Privacy conference.
Microsoft has been working on online privacy issues since launching MSN in 1994. We’ve had our challenges along the way, but we’ve learned from our mistakes and privacy has become increasingly central to everything we do.
Earlier this year, in a speech at the University of Washington, Steve Ballmer said: “As a mature and responsible organization, we have got to lead with privacy.”
And this is very much Microsoft’s goal. To apply what we’ve learned in the past around privacy to today’s rapidly evolving landscape of social media, information flows and the cloud.
One reason we are focused on privacy is because it still very much matters to our customers- it remains a matter of “trust.”
While social media may be pushing the boundaries around privacy and altering certain behaviors, heavy users of social media – including young people who some claim don’t know better -- value and fiercely protect their right to privacy.
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 Caroline Curtin Policy Counsel, U.S. Government Affairs
A broad-based group representing the technology industry, public interest groups, and the federal government has released a report—“Youth Safety on a Living Internet”—that exploresindustry efforts to make the Internet a safer place for children.
The Online Safety and Technology Working Group (OSTWG) was established by the Broadband Data Improvement Act. Passed by Congress in 2008, the legislation directed the National Telecommunications and Information Administration to create the OSTWG in order to examine industry efforts to promote online safety and evaluate the development of parental control technologies.
I participated on Microsoft’s behalf—along with more than 30 child safety experts from the public and private sectors—in the OSTWG meetings over the last year.
I learned many things during my year with the OSTWG, but one meeting particularly stands out. We invited middle and high school students from Washington, D.C. schools to talk about their experiences on the Internet. Students expressed genuine concern for their “digital reputations” and how unintended consequences of the pictures they post and messages they leave on social networks could potentially affect their ability to get into college or attain a job.