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The Almighty Buck

FTC Shuts Down Pop-Up Extortion Firm 472

Posted by CmdrTaco from the thats-just-crazy dept.
An anonymous reader writes "The FTC has shut down D Squared, a company that's been spamming via the Windows Messenger Pop-Up Service. In some cases, ads would pop-up every 10 minutes, and only advertised a $30 product that disabled similar pop-up ads. The FTC is slamming the extortion gauntlet on them. Interestingly, the FTC only caught onto all this because one of their own commissioners was among those getting spammed."
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FTC Shuts Down Pop-Up Extortion Firm More

FTC Shuts Down Pop-Up Extortion Firm

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  • I wonder what their email addresses are... (Score:3, Funny)

    by delirium28 ( 641609 ) on Thursday November 06, 2003 @04:54PM (#7410904) Journal
    Maybe we can get them to shut down the spammers next...

  • one of their own commissioners... (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Threni ( 635302 ) on Thursday November 06, 2003 @04:54PM (#7410906)
    "Interestingly, the FTC only caught onto all this because one of their own commissioners was among those getting spammed."

    There's a lesson for us all, there.
    • Yep, so much for government of the people, by the people, for the people. It's only when their self-interest gets nicked that they move their lardarses. Lets hope some of them lose money on $CO..
    • ... keep your goddamned machines patched. All it took was a 2 second patch from Windows Update, or a 15 second trip into the control panel to turn off the messanger service.

      • Re:The lesson is... (Score:3, Insightful)

        by mark-t ( 151149 )
        In all fairness, presumably the messenger service exists in the first place because it was supposed to be useful. The fact that you should have to disable what is _supposed_ to be a useful service on a system in order to keep out people who have no business messenging your PC in the first place is sort of counter-intuitive, don't you think?
    • "Interestingly, the FTC only caught onto all this because one of their own commissioners was among those getting spammed."

      There's a lesson for us all, there.

      Before we wander off into knee-jerk madness, let me remove the contextual spin from this. The actual quote is below.

      Part of the reason Windows Messenger pop-ups caught the attention of the FTC is that one of the agency's commissioners received one of the advertisements at home, Beales said. But the FTC also received numerous complaints from consum

  • Not quite right. (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Delphix ( 571159 ) * on Thursday November 06, 2003 @04:54PM (#7410917)
    "POP-UP ADVERTISING is a fact of life," said Howard Beales, Director of the FTC's Bureau of Consumer Protection. "But one company has taken pop-ups beyond annoyance."

    No it's not. I use Safari (Mac OS) and Mozilla (Linux/Windows) for all my web browsing. And I use Trillian, Gaim, or Fire for IM.

    So no, POP-UP Advertising is deifnetly not a fact of life. It's just that too many people are unaware how easy it is to get away from.

    • Windows: Google toolbar (Score:4, Informative)

      by lostindenver ( 53192 ) on Thursday November 06, 2003 @06:22PM (#7411882)
      I use the Google tool bar and it stop 99% of all pop ups. It also is site by site configurable so I can have usefull pop ups on some sites

    • Re:Not quite right. (Score:3, Interesting)

      by zymurgyboy ( 532799 )
      The article is talking about exploiting the Windows Messenger service, not instant messenger or using equally irritating and far more common web browser based pop-up ads.

      This would be more accurately classed as yet another stupid on-by-default, security-decreasing idiocy on the part of Microsoft. Why the OS would install with this on by default is a mystery to me.

      I'm just glad MS didn't decide to remove it from future versions of the Windows. I've actually used this feature at work and found it quite

  • Thats what we get for tolerating advertisements (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Accord MT ( 542922 ) on Thursday November 06, 2003 @04:55PM (#7410922)
    Shame on us! We are intruded upon every day and no one complains. Hour by hour, our eyes and ears are bombarded with advertisements, but we accept it all as a fact of life. Why do we allow this tresspass into our daily lives? Why is it considered acceptable to allow companies to push products in our faces every second of every day? Why don't we have laws against advertising?

    If someone dumps raw sewage in the streets, the cops will take them away. If someone plays their boom-box too loud in my neighborhood, they will eventually be fined. So why do we allow billboards, huge store signs, and ads on cars, busses, and park benches to pollute our visual environment?

    I should be able to go for a walk or ride my bike outside without having to endure constant sales pitches, without having huge logos and brand names all over the place. Don't you agree? Is some corporation's desire to sell a product really more important than our desire of a peaceful environment?

    If I stood outside your house all day shouting "Buy My Product!!!" over and over you'd get kind of angry wouldn't you? So why don't you get angry when corporations do the same thing via huge billboards? What exactly is the difference?
    • . . .ride my bike outside without having to endure constant sales pitches, without having huge logos and brand names all over the place.

      Actually, this is a pretty good description of the appearance of most of the bike riders I see these days.

      KFG
    • What exactly is the difference?
      1. Humans have free speech
      2. Corporations are legally human
      3. ???
      4. PROFIT! (Seriously. If you can declare a personal income of several billion a year, YOU TOO can engage in free speech.)
      • The difference is commercial speech, which is subject to all sorts of restrictions that things like political speech are not. Google for "commercial speech", check out some of the Supreme Court cases.
      • No, humans do not have free speech. In some countries, we do have freedom of expression though.

        I liken advertising to "offensive" or threatening language.

        You can't walk up to a 5 year old and start swearing at the top of your lungs, or tell every woman you meet that you'll be raping her later tonight. Why? Because society has deemed this sort of speech too much for good taste. Hence obscenity and harassment laws. Say those things all you like in the privacy of your own home, but not to my face, thank you
        • The ONLY reason advertising is allowed is because we, as a society, permit it.

          The ONLY reason advertising is allowed is because it pays the fucking bills.

          The trick consists in keeping the shit to a half-reasonable minimum without putting everybody out of business, and no two humans seem to agree on what, exactly, a "half-reasonable" minimum actually consists of.

        • You can't walk up to a 5 year old and start swearing at the top of your lungs

          Actually, yes you can.

          or tell every woman you meet that you'll be raping her later tonight.

          Again, you can, though since rape is criminal, a significant factor will be whether you meant it, and whether they think you mean it. If there were no real likelihood of a threat (e.g. you're just some schmuck with Tourette's) then it's not regulable.

          I think you should really read the famous case of Cohen v. California, 403 US 15 (1971
      • Humans have free speech

        You're taking free speech too literally. Obviously you've never seen sombody (or been) taken away for causing a public disturbance. Free speech isn't, and shouldn't be, absolute. Advertisers shouldn't have the right to pop whatever they want up on my computer screen any more than you should have the right to scream out loudly, obnoxiously, and continually in a public (or private and not belonging to you) space.

        In the US, the first amendment uses the words "freedom of speech", but i

    • Re:Thats what we get for tolerating advertisements (Score:4, Insightful)

      by Quasar1999 ( 520073 ) on Thursday November 06, 2003 @05:13PM (#7411145) Journal
      Your argument is flawed. I am not forced to look at ads on billboards, or even tv... I am forced to listen to you yelling buy my product, and a boombox, etc...

      The difference with pop-up ads, is they are unwanted, and cannot be ignored... If I go to a website with pop-ups, and I don't like them, I can never come back... but with this pop-up advertising, they were there, without any action on my part, and directly interrupted me.
      • you can honestly say that you can keep from seeing advertisements? like, how do you know that when you look at some direction that there won't be advertisements there that catch your attention with some pictures of naked ladies? if you're that good then you'd probably would be able to block out all that shouting as well(you do block out that icecream truck tune, right?). you exactly are forced to look at billboards and other public ads if you intend to not walk around eyes closed.

        actually you're not arguin
      • "...but with this pop-up advertising, they were there, without any action on my part, and directly interrupted me."

        Just like adverts on TV.

    • Re:Thats what we get for tolerating advertisements (Score:4, Funny)

      by jazman_777 ( 44742 ) on Thursday November 06, 2003 @05:17PM (#7411193) Homepage
      What exactly is the difference?

      Billboards are not a violation of anyone's property rights. They may be an aesthetic offense, but that is what life in the USA is all about these days, is it not? Looking like a slob is one of our fundamental rights.

    • Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)

      by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Thursday November 06, 2003 @05:17PM (#7411194)
      Comment removed based on user account deletion
      • So poor people are the only ones who can't complain about ads in their neighborhood?

        A piece of property with a billboard on it in Chicago costs tens of thousands of dollars. I can't afford that, neither can anybody in my neighborhood.

        How else do we deal with our polluted visual environment?
      • >you paid for your PC and no advertiser, whether a spammer or a pop-up advertiser, has a right to steal your bandwidth or storage.

        Let's face it, the cost of the bandwidth and storage is tiny. The real cost is your time and lost productivity due to the interruption. Perhaps it come down to the fact that you should have an expectation of privacy while in a private place (in your home in your 'personal space' on your own computer).

      • Re:Thats what we get for tolerating advertisements (Score:4, Informative)

        by letxa2000 ( 215841 ) on Thursday November 06, 2003 @05:50PM (#7411581)
        If you don't like a billboard, then buy the property on which it is located and tear down the billboard. But you are hard-pressed to claim that the billboard interfered with your work or cost you money.

        It's funny seeing people not complain about billboards or saying that they are ok. These are people that haven't lived in a BBRE (BillBoard Rich Environment).

        As I said elsewhere in this thread, move to Mexico for awhile. There are days I literally feel claustrophobic because of the saturation of the skyline (at all levels... ground level, 30 feet, 100 fet) with advertisements. Yes, I tune them out. You HAVE to tune them out. They've gone past the point of "they don't notice it but will remember it subconsciously." There are so many that they are just a blur of color as you drive by... They're on corners, on tops of residential and commercial rooftops, on stand-alone supports that some business decided to mount in the middle of their microscopic parking lot, painted on brick walls, hanging from or mounted above pedestrian bridges, overpasses--and most of them are at least partially blocked by other billboards anyway. It's like being in Time Square but without the general coolness and flashing lights that makes Time Square cool rather than an advertising eyesore.

        Really... It's something I think every politician in the U.S. should have as part of their "initiation" or "orientation." Live in Mexico for a week and truly observe how bad advertising can be if not carefully checked.

        I'm not sure if there's less advertising in the U.S. than in Mexico because advertisers intentionally don't want to saturate to this level and numb everyone completely or because the local governments *DO* have a decent level of restriction that prevents it from getting this bad.

    • *sigh*.. Ok. One of the differences is that some of the facilities bearing the ads are only there because of the ads. The serenity of the park might be spoiled by an ad-bearing bench, but without the ad there might not even be a bench, or if there was you might have paid for it with tax dollars or worse, and admission fee to the park. These things don't grow on trees. Someone has to pay for them, and if Nike will do that in exchange for having there logo on the bench, fine. At least I have somewhere to sit
    • "Shame on us! We are intruded upon every day and no one complains."

      People complain all the time. Perhaps you are unaware of software like pop-up blockers, spam killers, and TiVo?

      "Why do we allow this tresspass into our daily lives?"

      They're not boring into my skull, they're throwing up info where I might see it. Ultimately, it's still my choice to watch the commercial or go take a leak. It really isn't that big of deal.

      "Why is it considered acceptable to allow companies to push products in our fac
    • What are you some sort of immature child?

      The reason why advertising exists is because people AND companies like to make money.

      Money you moron, MONEY.
    • Its called: zoning

      Those people with extra $$$ get domeciles in areas with strict building codes preventing, say, billboards. Mendicino CA, Grinnell IA come to mind, but there must be thousands.

      I know a filthy rich woman, who succesfully personally lobbied to keep all billboards off of Interstate 71 between her house and downtown louisville, because "she didn't want her friends to have to look at them on the way to the opera".
    • That's why we have zoning laws of various degrees. There are communities that mandate the number of orange trees that are allowed in your garden. If that's what you want, may be you should move there.
    • Does this mean that we can sue spam companies that send us spam to sell us their spam blockers? Wouldn't that be considered extortion as well?

    • There is no difference. It comes down to money.

      If you're rich enough, you can dump raw sewage in the streets, or dump needles in the ocean, or dump toxic chemicals in the rivers.

      If you're rich enough, you can drive down the street blasting ads, sales pitches, sound bites, corporate jingles, and not have to worry about anything.

      If you're rich enough, you can fill every inch of the earth up with your important sales message.

      Because after all, the economy is the most important thing in the world. If it w
    • why do we allow billboards, huge store signs, and ads on cars, busses, and park benches to pollute our visual environment?

      Why do we allow fat people on a beach to pollute my visual environment? It's no more rediculous than your assertion that billboards and signs pollute your visual environment.

      There's a difference between ligit advertisement and intrusive advertisements. It used to be just snail-mail junk-mail type spam. Then it was fax-spamming. Then it was email spam. I don't even know all the

  • AOL reconfigures your system... ok, fine (Score:5, Interesting)

    by RobertB-DC ( 622190 ) * on Thursday November 06, 2003 @04:56PM (#7410930) Homepage Journal
    You know, when I saw in the article that AOL was automatically turning off users' Messenger Service, I wondered if that was stepping over the line. After all, we Slashdotters *hate* it when someone messes with our configuration without our permission!

    Then, I read the process, and remembered doing the same thing to turn off the oh-so-obvious "Your print job is complete" messages from the laser printer in the next cube. It would be so easy for a non-geek to either screw up or freeze like a deer in the headlights:

    Beales recommends that current Windows users manually shut the service off to protect themselves from unwanted pop-ups.
    To disable Messenger:
    * Click Start, and then click Control Panel (or point to Settings, and then click Control Panel).
    * Double-click Administrative Tools.
    * Double-click Services.
    * Double-click Messenger.
    * In the Startup type list, click Disabled. Click Stop, and then click OK.

    Not to stereotype AOLers, but considering what their tech support [rinkworks.com] would face if newbies were given those instructions, I think they did the right thing to shut off a service that nobody uses anyway.

    I'm trying to think of why the Messenger Service was a good thing in the first place. I recall way back before Win95, we used to prank each other with dire "system messages". Was that all it was ever good for?

  • These are annoying (Score:3, Informative)

    by Pingular ( 670773 ) on Thursday November 06, 2003 @04:56PM (#7410935)
    The popups are annoying, but they can easily be blocked by installing Zonealarm [www.http], or any other good firewall.

    • Re:These are annoying (Score:2, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Or, instead of clicking on you non-working link to install a pile of shit annoyance on your already resource-choked Windows machine, how about just disabling the Windows Messenger service?

      You don't have precious seconds to waste by clicking the preview button, but you're reading Slashdot?

      • Re:These are annoying (Score:3, Informative)

        by Pingular ( 670773 )
        The incorrect link was a typo, anyone reading the link would be able to go to the right address themselves. If you think you should disable the messenger service instead (although this would still leave you open to attacks from hackers, and I strongly recommend the use of a decent firewall aswell) the following steps can be taken:

        Windows 2000

        1. Click Start-> Settings-> Control Panel-> Administrative Tools->Services
        2. Scroll down and highlight "Messenger"
        3. Right-click the highlighted line and
      • how about just disabling the Windows Messenger service?

        Yeah, that'll sure help the next time an RPC vulnerability is found. What are we on, 4 of these this year?

        Have fun disabling that service and still using Windows.

        A firewall is a MUST when running windows, and if you find that something like Zonealarm really takes that much out of your resources, I'd suggest upgrading past your 1st generation Pentium-class machine.
        • I'm as much for Windows bashing as the next slashdotter, but, this is a lousy argument. Yes, there have been RPC problems, and there have also been patches. If I'm dedicated about installing the patches on my system, what does a firewall do for me, exactly (besides take up resources)?
          • If I'm dedicated about installing the patches on my system, what does a firewall do for me, exactly (besides take up resources)?

            I've noticed programs that really shouldn't be doing so attempting to access the internet - my firewall (Kerio) stops it nicely. One example would be Quickbooks...

  • Full FTC press release (Score:5, Informative)

    by John3 ( 85454 ) <john3NO@SPAMcornells.com> on Thursday November 06, 2003 @04:59PM (#7410971) Homepage Journal
    is here [ftc.gov].
  • but how many to go? This is a good step, but the legal system is too slow and too regional to deal effectively with Internet-age criminals. The solution to spammers and domain name squatters is going to have to come from the Internet community itself.

    • Huh? There's no difference between the "Internet community" and the general public anymore. You're not gonna get a solution from the "Internet community" before you have a worldwide government first...
  • "Advertising that says only 'I'll stop advertising if you pay me' is an easy case,"

    I think a lot of them should be easiler than the FTC would like to admit. I know unwanted junk advertising when it invades my computer, and it doesn't have to be as obvious as above!

  • Targets (Score:4, Insightful)

    by rf0 ( 159958 ) <rghf@fsck.me.uk> on Thursday November 06, 2003 @04:59PM (#7410979) Homepage
    Well this is like the story a few days ago about an FBI agent who was spammed about a credit card scam and got the women arrested. Prehaps things like the FTC should have one individual who they try to get on every mailing list / get target by spammers. Least that way something could be done

    Rus

    • Re:Targets (Score:2, Informative)

      by CKW ( 409971 )
      Or we should find out who this one individual is, and get him on ever single spam list and fraudster's radar.

      Him and all the exec's at the big companies. Then make sure the CTO's are "properly advised" by their head techies as to what needs to be done:

      aka:

      - don't buy Microsoft
      - co-operate and support an IETF standard on authenticated e-mail
      - etc etc.
    • Prehaps things like the FTC should have one individual who they try to get on every mailing list / get target by spammers.

      Why wait for the FTC to put themselves on their mailing lists. Just get the contact information of influential members of the government and sign them up for all the promotions you can find.

  • 2 billion.. hmmm (Score:5, Funny)

    by nyet ( 19118 ) on Thursday November 06, 2003 @05:00PM (#7410988) Homepage
    "On its Web site, the firm said the software could beam 135,000 pop-up ads at consumers every hour, and claimed to have a database of over two billion Internet addresses, according to the FTC."

    2^32, minus subnets and netmasks, minus 10, 127, 192.168, etc...

  • Okay... (Score:5, Funny)

    by Saint Aardvark ( 159009 ) * on Thursday November 06, 2003 @05:01PM (#7410996) Homepage Journal
    "But the firm now says Windows Messenger probably isn't necessary for home users, and future versions of its Windows software will come with the service turned off."

    I gotta know. Who ported cluestick to Windows? :-)

  • Messenger spam? (Score:2, Redundant)

    by big_groo ( 237634 )
    net stop messenger

    This is a problem?

  • Why does it seem like government regulatory agencies and enforcement agencies only give a shit once it happens to whoever is in charge of them? Baah, well, let's make sure to sign up the commissioner of the FTC to a bunch of spam lists while we're at it, then maybe they'll see fit to pursue some of those scumbags too.

    Also, what about all those TV ads for reprehensibly misrepresented products. Why doesn't the FDA or the FTC go after the dozens of companies flagrantly running ads making miraculous health

  • How long before linux is affected? (Score:2, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    It has come to my attention that there is a is a program called "kdialog" on most distros (since KDE is the dominant gui), since there are a lot of incecure boxen out there, how long will it take before some one writes a program to exploit this.

    If you think I'm lying, press ALT+F2, then paste the following into it.

    kdialog --msgbox "Your computer is broadcasting a IP Address, please go to purplemonkeyse.cx to download a security fix for only \$129"

    To see if you computer is vulnerable, press ALT+PRINT S

  • It is pointed out that Windows Messanger may be safely shut off, and will soon default to off for home users -- as if why wasn't it always this way to start with?

    How long though before MS integrates it in as an essensial feature ala Internet Explorer. Isn't MS still on a drive to create the ultimate MOS (Monolothic Operating System)?

  • something Microsoft Windows users had to put up with all the time when they were browsing the web back in the nineties and noughties...

    Daddy, what's Microsoft Windows???

  • Not until it bothers me... (Score:4, Interesting)

    by zbowling ( 597617 ) * <zacNO@SPAMzacbowling.com> on Thursday November 06, 2003 @05:05PM (#7411057) Homepage Journal
    I posted this on an ASK Slashdot a while back.
    ::History:: [slashdot.org]

    Its funny how the goverment doesn't seem to care until they get experience it for them selves? That fast against the messanger pop up stuff.

    Wooooo..

    How long will it take until they can't stand spam in their email and they decided to finally decide to take care of it. How about all of us legimate email users get together and spam the FCC and maybe we can piss them off anough to do something about it.

  • What took so long? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by thedillybar ( 677116 ) on Thursday November 06, 2003 @05:05PM (#7411062)
    This is ridiculous. I understand why it's difficult to block spam: the sender makes an effort to be anonymous and unknown. They aren't recognized as legitimate companies and many of them are overseas and not subject to many laws.

    Read the title. "FTC Shuts Down Pop-Up Extortion Firm" This is a firm in the United States with one heck of a business model. If what they're doing isn't illegal, it needs to be. The idea that a company could do this for so long and scam so many people certainly doesn't prove the effectiveness of our system to me. Something needs to change.

    I hope we all do some research and think twice the next time we hit the polls. Matters like these are the responsibility of many various lawmakers. Let's hope they can earn all those figures and get some work done at the same time. Sure it's difficult, but suck it up for once.
  • I got spammed by a few of those, and it must have been the most annoying 5 minutes or so that I have ever spent on a computer... and it really, really made me despise the company or individual sending them. It is 100 times worse than e-mail spam, because they interrupt work or other important activities!

  • I wrote this really amusing application a time ago (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Eudial ( 590661 ) on Thursday November 06, 2003 @05:14PM (#7411164)
    I wrote this really amusing application a time ago, it listened to the ports used for MS win msg, and if it received a valid message, it replied once every 5 seconds, 600 times with the same message + the text "\nQuit spamming ffs!". Quite efficient.

    Why? Well, my son is a student at a computer college, and he was sickin tired of people thinking that broadcasting MS windows messenger popus was fun, so he asked me for a tool to repent the spammers.
    • I wrote this really amusing application a time ago, it listened to the ports used for MS win msg, and if it received a valid message, it replied once every 5 seconds, 600 times with the same message + the text "\nQuit spamming ffs!". Quite efficient.

      I actually wrote something similar, but not quite as annoying, for IRC quite a while ago. Every time someone would spam (channel-wide notice, or one of those obviously infected-with-a-trojan messsages), it would send that IP a net msg saying "Your computer is

  • M$ has changed their tune (Score:4, Interesting)

    by El ( 94934 ) on Thursday November 06, 2003 @05:14PM (#7411165)
    Last time I checked, I seem to recall they said "You really shouldn't disable Windows Messenger; buy a firewall instead." (Followed by instructions on how to disable.) Now they seem to be admitting it wasn't necessary in the first place here [microsoft.com]

  • Microsoft gets no blame (Score:3, Interesting)

    by t_allardyce ( 48447 ) on Thursday November 06, 2003 @05:17PM (#7411195) Journal
    An entire business set up on the basis that Microsoft leaves this stupid thing turned on. They get caught, (and yes the burgler is still responsible even if the door is left open) and Microsoft gets absolutely nothing, no "you should be more careful leaving un-needed services like that on by default it just encourages them" no bad press coverage about how all these things (pop up windows, pop-up messages, VB viri) could have been prevented if microsoft had changed 1 line of code.

  • Check out the domains Square D registered (Score:3, Interesting)

    by John3 ( 85454 ) <john3NO@SPAMcornells.com> on Thursday November 06, 2003 @05:21PM (#7411241) Homepage Journal
    The complete list is here [ftc.gov], but the ones that jumped out are:

    blockmessenger.com

    defeatpopupspam.com

    easypopupblocker.com

    endads.com

    fightpopups.com

    I guess it's like the big corporate guys trying to buy up all the yourcorporatenameheresucks.com domains. On the other hand, maybe selling pop-up blockers to defeat their own spam tool was their way of making money from both sides of the equation>

    Sell pop-up spam tools to the marketing firms, and sell blockers to the consumers.

    • Doh...sorry, but the direct link to the list of domain names was incorrect on the prior message.

      Here [ftc.gov] is the PDF file of the Square D domain names.
  • Interestingly, the FTC only caught onto all this because one of their own commissioners was among those getting spammed.

    Quick! Somebody get me Dubya's personal email address!! We are gonna get him to start a new "war on terror", and can even get Homeland Security involved...

  • Never seen one of these (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Zed2K ( 313037 ) on Thursday November 06, 2003 @05:57PM (#7411664)
    Oh wait, I know why I've never seen one. I bothered to take the few minutes and spend the money to secure my pc's and network before attaching to my cable modem.

    What do you want people that make toilets to handhold you also when you go take a piss? Might hit the floor and make a slick spot then go after the plumber or something.

    Its called accepting responsibility, in this case for your network.

  • Microsoft's interesting response (Score:3, Interesting)

    by murdocj ( 543661 ) on Thursday November 06, 2003 @06:04PM (#7411734)

    To me the most interesting part is Microsoft's response:

    A Microsoft spokesman said future versions of Windows would ship with Messenger turned off but said the company should not be faulted for enabling Windows Messenger.
    "At the time we released Windows XP (news - web sites), it wasn't an issue that was being abused," Microsoft spokesman Sean Sundwall said.

    In other words, despite all the hype about security and code reviews, Microsoft just doesn't view exploitable *features* as holes until the exploit actually occurs. The idea of trying to make the systems they release secure from the start still hasn't taken hold.

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