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Förderverein Informationstechnik und Gesellschaft
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------- Forwarded message follows ------- Date sent: Mon, 19 Mar 2001 19:30:08 -0500 To: politech@politechbot.com From: Declan McCullagh <declan@well.com> Subject: FC: Microsoft wants to be Big Brother... and wants you to pay Copies to: mtarsala@marketwatch.com, jwarren@well.com Send reply to: declan@well.com
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Date: Mon, 19 Mar 2001 16:03:11 -0800 To: farber@cis.upenn.edu (Dave Farber), Declan McCullagh <declan@well.com>, freematt@coil.com (Matthew Gaylor) From: Jim Warren <jwarren@well.com> Subject: MS Big Brother wants you to help ... and wants you to pay, to boot! Cc: mtarsala@marketwatch.com
According to CBS MarketWatch, below, Microsoft now wants to be the holder of *much* of our most sensitive medical, financial and other personal information. Before reading about MS' latest "service," consider --
* Only a few months ago, Microsoft's own network was cracked and it's believed that massive amounts of internal information may have been downloaded from it before the network was killed.
* At great expense, an increasing number of federal agencies and foreign government agencies are abandoning Microsoft server and other software, stating that it's simply too insecure for them to risk using it any longer.
* Holes in Microsoft's Internet Explorer and/or Outlook Express has been estimated to be responsible for covertly circulating to millions of entries in naive users' address books, a huge number of viruses, Trojan horses, and DDOS (distributed denial of service) attacks, including several that cost their targets hundreds of thousands of dollars in down-time, lost business and consumptive recovery efforts.
* Microsoft is also the company that said they absolutely did not collect information about user machines when users did online software registration -- until it was proven that they WERE doing exactly that (covertly picking off each machine's globally-unique Ethernet-card serial number).
* Microsoft's Word includes "features" that are estimated to have facilitated about 1/4-1/3 of *all* of the world's computer viruses in the last 4-5 years.
Geee ... thanks very much ... but I think I'll keep my most sensitive personal information in my OWN files -- and copy'n'paste it if/when needed!
--jim, Jim Warren; jwarren@well.com, technology & public policy columnist Also GovAccess founder/list-owner/editor, and DataCast founder/owner 345 Swett Rd, Woodside CA 94062; voice/650-851-7075; fax/off due to spam-glut
[self-inflating puff: Playboy Foundation's Hugh Hefner First-Amendment Award; Soc.of Prof.Journalists-Nor.Calif.'s James Madison Freedom-of-Information Award; founded InfoWorld; Dr. Dobb's Journal; Computers, Freedom & Privacy Conferences; Electronic Frontier Foundation's Pioneer Award (in its first year), blah blah]
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http://cbs.marketwatch.com/news/story.asp?print=1&guid={BAF153AC-EAF5- 4449-8DC8-C837376B5912}&siteid=mktw
Microsoft unveils awaited software By Mike Tarsala, CBS.MarketWatch.com Last Update: 5:07 PM ET Mar 19, 2001
REDMOND, Wash. (CBS.MW) - Bill Gates is trying to convince anyone who's ever filled out a form on the Internet to trust him with their lives - and pay his company for it.
Gates unveiled Internet-based software Monday that lets people store and manage their personal records [making] the world's largest software company a central repository for storing credit card numbers, birth records and other types of personal information. The company will charge a to-be-determined monthly fee for the service.
Code-named Hailstorm ...
... The software keeps people from having to root through file cabinets any time they want to make a big-ticket purchase, file a medical claim or apply for a loan.
<snip>
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