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Microsoft It's funny. Laugh.

MS Promotion Site Flagged By MS Anti-Phishing 279

Posted by kdawson from the too-good-to-be-true dept.
Stony Stevenson writes "Microsoft has launched a marketing campaign that lets any student at an Australian university buy the Ultimate edition of Office 2007, usual price $1,150, for only $75 — a discount of about 93%. But when students go to the promotion site, Microsoft Live OneCare pops up a warning that the site may be a phishing scam. The warning reads: 'Phishing filter has determined this might be a phishing website. We recommend that you do not give any of your information to such websites. Phishing websites impersonate trustworthy websites for the purpose of obtaining your personal or financial information.'"
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MS Promotion Site Flagged By MS Anti-Phishing More

MS Promotion Site Flagged By MS Anti-Phishing

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  • Microsoft has finally done it! (Score:5, Funny)

    by Samalie ( 1016193 ) on Tuesday March 06, 2007 @06:37PM (#18256660)
    Its about time....Microsoft has finally recognized itself as evil. Hell has officially frozen over :)

  • Oh no! (Score:4, Funny)

    by AlphaLop ( 930759 ) on Tuesday March 06, 2007 @06:39PM (#18256664)
    A Microsoft product that does not work right? The Shock of it... I better unload all my Microsoft stock before the other investors get wind of this! ;)

  • It Works! (Score:5, Funny)

    by 7bit ( 1031746 ) on Tuesday March 06, 2007 @06:39PM (#18256670)
    Wow! Live OneCare actually does work!

  • On a related topic.. (Score:5, Funny)

    by StikyPad ( 445176 ) on Tuesday March 06, 2007 @06:39PM (#18256678) Homepage
    If any Australian students would like to make a cool 100% profit, please let me know. :)

    • Re:On a related topic.. (Score:5, Funny)

      by ZachPruckowski ( 918562 ) <zachary.pruckowski@gmail.com> on Tuesday March 06, 2007 @07:19PM (#18257080)
      Yeah, if you can deal with Clippy saying "G'day mate, how 'bout some letter-writing?"

  • New Marketing Campaign (Score:5, Funny)

    by L. VeGas ( 580015 ) on Tuesday March 06, 2007 @06:40PM (#18256680) Homepage Journal
    It's just part of an overall "bad boy" campaign that MS is using to try to seem cool.

    Go ahead and buy from us. IF YOU HAVE THE GUTS.

  • Too Funny (Score:3)

    by DaMattster ( 977781 ) on Tuesday March 06, 2007 @06:41PM (#18256682)
    This one gave me a belly ache from laughing. Imagine that MS would anti-phish itself. Gee, I wonder where the disconnect happen between product development and marketing. HAHA

  • tough problem (Score:4, Interesting)

    by iammaxus ( 683241 ) on Tuesday March 06, 2007 @06:42PM (#18256704)
    That's a tough problem because the easy way to solve it is to add a whitelist to the phishing filter, but that is just asking for security problems (think malware hijacking the whitelist). I guess they will actually just have to make the filter work...

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by 1u3hr ( 530656 )
      The problem is that the site, "www.itsnotcheating.com.au" was obviously created just for this campaign by some advertising agency. So it shares many of the qualities of a phishing site; no history, lots of content referring to a "trusted" site or a big company. If marketing idiots didn't insist on creating a new TLD for every campaign, people would simply know that if it didn't end in microsoft.com(.au) then it was bogus. Would it really have been so hard to use "itsnotcheating.microsoft.com.au"?

      And looki

  • 75$AU? Microsoft? Sounds like it really is a phising scam, or it's at least phishy!

  • Apple says it best (Score:5, Funny)

    by mad_psych0 ( 991712 ) on Tuesday March 06, 2007 @06:47PM (#18256760)
    "You are attempting to save money! Would you like to allow or deny?"

  • OMG!!! (Score:4, Funny)

    by Creepy Crawler ( 680178 ) on Tuesday March 06, 2007 @06:51PM (#18256800)
    Im using IE7 and wow! It is teh smartest!!

    Is this [gameandfishmag.com] a fishing site??? Cause IE knows and I knows!! Thats awesome!

    Wonder if you can find what lures work with what on IE7?

  • And if MS white flagged all their advocates (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Timesprout ( 579035 ) on Tuesday March 06, 2007 @06:59PM (#18256874)
    Slashdot would implode with rage

  • Bill Gates Cyborg Icon (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 06, 2007 @07:03PM (#18256908)
    Slightly off topic, but can we motion to come up with a new 'M$' logo?

    1. The guy is barely involved within the company anymore.
    2. Bill Gates has started a profoundly large charity foundation
    3. Someone could make some downright hilarious steve ballmer cyborg icons with minimal effort.

    Am I the only one feeling this?

    • Re: (Score:3, Funny)

      by spells ( 203251 )
      Bill - why are you reading slashdot on a Tuesday night - I thought it was bridge night with Buffett.

    • Re:Bill Gates Cyborg Icon (Score:5, Funny)

      by skoaldipper ( 752281 ) on Tuesday March 06, 2007 @09:40PM (#18258060)

      Slightly off topic, but can we motion to come up with a new 'M$' logo?
      This [imageshack.us] is the best I could do on such short notice.

    • 2. Bill Gates has started a profoundly large charity foundation

      Which funds initiatives that try to "cure" AIDS by paying for expensive, patented drug treatments for some people, instead of cheap generic equivalents that could reach a much greater portion of those who need the treatments.

      While this will help many people with AIDS, it will also support the concept of Intellectual Property, which is central to those billions of dollars that Bill Gates has invested in Microsoft.

      The Borg/Locutus icon is quite

      • Which funds initiatives that try to "cure" AIDS by paying for expensive, patented drug treatments for some people, instead of cheap generic equivalents that could reach a much greater portion of those who need the treatments.

        While this will help many people with AIDS, it will also support the concept of Intellectual Property, which is central to those billions of dollars that Bill Gates has invested in Microsoft.

        And those not helped? Essentially a death sentence. For that reason and others [slashdot.org] I for one remai

  • Because, you know (Score:5, Insightful)

    by dctoastman ( 995251 ) on Tuesday March 06, 2007 @07:08PM (#18256964) Homepage
    It's not like anyone would report the site as a phishing scam for cheap laughs.
    • Well. Let me show you a screenshot I snapped early on in the IE betas. I think this was beta 1, but it's been a while now. And just to be clear, I took the shot myself. It's not doctored in any way. It happened while I was on the MS corporate network, and you can even see that the Passport login passed. Flagged for Phishing [pgsit.org]
  • Bribing Pro Bloggers with laptops? [slashdot.org] Bad. Very bad.
    Bribing amateur bloggers with scooters/laptops/mp3 players? [itsnotcheating.com.au] No problem
    From the website:

    Enter the Golden Blog Awards to win great prizes
    All you have to do is mention the word 'office' and the link 'www.itsnotcheating.com.au' in your blog. Winner is judged on creativity of the story.
    The blog or video with highest number of supporting comments will have the chance to win this fab music pack.

    I don't think that needs comment.

    (PS: The original text c
    • I think I could get creative, but I'm not sure that the result would be work place safe.

      It is an interesting quote and goes along nicely with the payola scam posted on the front page.

  • I have to ask, what's so good about an office produce that makes it worth more than a grand... and what's special about "Ultimate"?

    For all the MS Office products I've used, generally there's been a Standard (Word/Excel/Powerpoint/Outlook) and Pro (Add Access and I believe frontpage). So what does "ultimate" bring to the table? What does it offer that would make it worth the non-discounted price?

    It really seems that MS has jumped on the tiered-product bandwagon (standard, pro, ultimate, superdooperfantab
    • I have to ask, what's so good about an office produce that makes it worth more than a grand

      ....
      Office for Apple Mac? umm

      We use a lot of fruits for snacks at lunch time but I'm pretty sure it doesn't comes to over a grand.

    • Re:Ultimate? (Score:5, Informative)

      by SEMW ( 967629 ) on Tuesday March 06, 2007 @07:35PM (#18257218)

      For all the MS Office products I've used, generally there's been a Standard (Word/Excel/Powerpoint/Outlook) and Pro (Add Access and I believe frontpage). So what does "ultimate" bring to the table?
      Pro has Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, Access, and Publisher; Ultimate adds OneNote, Groove, and InfoPath. What are Groove and Infopath, you ask? Your guess is as good as mine, because I have no ****ing idea whatsoever. Microsoft claim Groove is a "peer-to-peer collaboration solution", which has left me only slight more enlightened than before. Onenote's supposed to be pretty good, though.

      I have to ask, what's so good about an office produce that makes it worth more than a grand
      Ultimate is $590 in US dollars [amazon.com], the article was in Australian dollars.
      • What are Groove and Infopath, you ask? Your guess is as good as mine, because I have no ****ing idea whatsoever.

        Groove Home Page [microsoft.com]

        Building an Emergency Operations Center on Groove and SharePoint [microsoft.com]

        Infopath Home Page [microsoft.com] Create and manage electronic forms.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Afecks ( 899057 )
      I have to ask, what's so good about an office produce that makes it worth more than a grand... and what's special about "Ultimate"?

      It has fewer menus grayed out.

      No but seriously, the Ultimate versions of Windows share a common theme, which is merging business features together with home features. It's really a waste of money for most people that just want to write an essay or edit spreadsheets. It's all just a big grab for more money and it seems to be working very well.

    • I have to ask, what's so good about an office produce that makes it worth more than a grand... and what's special about "Ultimate"?

      It's called ultimate because they changed the interface, it's release coincided with the release of Vista and they're selling on sites that are flagged as phishing.

      If they continue their current approach, it will be the "Ultimate" version of office.

  • licensing (Score:3, Interesting)

    by vimh42 ( 981236 ) on Tuesday March 06, 2007 @07:12PM (#18257002)
    According to TFA, the deal is for students of AU universities with volume licences. In the education volume liscences I have seen, the liscence extends to the students. Which means the school just burns the student a copy. For nothing (or for a materials fee). The school already paid for the student to have it. Why would the student fork out additional money to MS?

    • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward
      The volume license agreement that is covered infact does not allow for home use by students, it's simply a way for the University to save money by not paying for each and every student's home use rights (like they do for staff in this case) and still provide an option for the Office package.
      this poster works for one of the universities offering the software as an SOE developer so I have to know the licensing arrangements!

  • half way there (Score:4, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 06, 2007 @07:12PM (#18257010)
    Now all we need is for Norton AntiVirus to detect itself as a virus and everything will be all set.
  • How does this scam detector work?

    Does it analyze a page and determine whether it gathers information? If so, the number of false positives would go through the roof, considering just how many pages do it today and (allegedly) with benign reasons.

    Is it peer reported? In that case, MS should probably prepare to see this a lot more often, given the amount of people who'd just love to make them look bad.

    So does anyone know where this scam detector actually gets its information?

  • Now all that remains (Score:5, Funny)

    by GFree ( 853379 ) on Tuesday March 06, 2007 @07:55PM (#18257352)
    is for Windows Defender in Vista to stuff up and flag IE7 as spyware. That would be most amusing. :)

  • This shows it's working (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Rix ( 54095 ) on Tuesday March 06, 2007 @07:59PM (#18257380)
    No jabbing at MS intended. Something like this *should* generate more false positives than false negatives, because the cost to the user from a false positive is less than a false negative. Further, it shows that they aren't playing favourites, they've been caught in the same net anyone else might.

    A $1200 product being sold for $75 is probably either a) not a $1200 product, or b) a scam, so this seems to have worked well. Special academic discounts are a fringe case.

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward

      Something like this *should* generate more false positives than false negatives, because the cost to the user from a false positive is less than a false negative.

      Not true. The cost to the user from false positives is that they get trained to not believe warnings from security software. That can follow them around for the rest of their life, causing damage over and over again, even when they've switched software and even after Microsoft fix their bugs.

  • Meanwhile (Score:3, Informative)

    by Orion Blastar ( 457579 ) <orionblastar@gm[ ].com ['ail' in gap]> on Tuesday March 06, 2007 @08:08PM (#18257470) Homepage Journal
    the Microsoft Anti-Phishing filter fails to find web sites selling OEM versions of Microsoft's software if the user makes a typo in the URL to any of the Microsoft web sites. Offering Office 2007 Ultimate edition for $50, Vista Ultimate for $65, and other discounts on so called OEM software that is really pirated versions of Microsoft software and the personal information is sold and used for identity theft so the buyer gets burned twice.

  • There's never been a better time to buy! (Score:4, Funny)

    by Keith Russell ( 4440 ) on Tuesday March 06, 2007 @08:39PM (#18257694) Journal

    This deal is so good, even we can't believe it's for real! Order yours today! OPERATORS ARE STANDING BY!

  • Am I the only one who wishes that MS named their product the Phishing Philter?

  • Probbably deliberate (Score:5, Interesting)

    by MikShapi ( 681808 ) on Tuesday March 06, 2007 @09:54PM (#18258166) Journal
    They probably left in in the anti-phishing filter deliberately. Irony generates news, and news generate truckloads of free exposure.

    "Any publicity is good publicity, as long as they spell my name right"

    We all think it's ironic that MS software blocks an MS promotion campaign. We generated a truckload of comments laughing our asses off.
    The REAL irony that escapes us is that we gentoo- and ubuntu- running geeks all talk about it, laugh about it, tell our friends, family and collegues in the office about it, and get the word out to a lot of people, a decent percentage of which (who have student IDs in AU and/or access to someone with such) will hear "blah blah office 2k7 ultimate for 75A$ blah blah microsoft blooper blah". And guess what those of them who use office and can do the math will do then.

    Thus, thanks to us slashdot crowd, myself being a gentoo-desktop-running Aussie student (who also runs Windows on some of his machines) who is neither religious about being anti-microsoft nor thinks they do not deserve a sane amount of money for a software suite I wish to use, I promptly went out and paid microsoft 75$. Good'on'em.

    And looking back at our beloved slashdot crowd, I think that I, for one, welcome our new microsoft-promoting slashdotter overlords.
  • MicroSoft: We're phishing 4 u!

  • The left hand... (Score:3, Interesting)

    by xlsior ( 524145 ) on Tuesday March 06, 2007 @10:47PM (#18258438)
    ...doesn't know what the right hand is doing. Back when I worked for an ISP a few years ago, we received a threatening letter from EBay demaning the immediate disconnection of one of our customers for running a phishing site. And better speed it up, because they'd already reported it to the FBI as well. Of course, we pointed out to ebay that the site in question was actually one of their own subsidiaries. (they had links to it from all over the place on the main ebay.com website, even). Sure we can cut it off, but I really don't think you'd want us to. By the way, might want to call the FBI back to tell them "never mind", while you're at it. *sigh*

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