Microsoft May Create Russian Hotmail
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Microsoft Corp. is considering creating Russian versions of its Hotmail e-mail program and Microsoft Network online service, company CEO Steve Ballmer said in an interview published Monday.
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Spammers's Holy Grail Spammers are using a sophisticated piece of software that can create thousands of Windows Live email addresses by cracking the protections designed to prevent the large-scale creation of fraudulent accounts.â¦
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Microsoft&#39;s earlier attempts at a specification for Sender ID, the technology which is used for verifying the authenticity of e-mail with Internet Protocol records
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Spam, the junk mail that clogs the in-box of hundreds of millions of e-mail users, could become a thing of the past in around two years' time, Microsoft chairman Bill Gates said on a visit to Madrid.
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Microsoft (Nasdaq: MSFT) has taken another step to bolster its Web e-mail service, MSN Hotmail, by tying it with its popular desktop application Outlook. For a US&#36;59.95 yearly subscription fee, customers can use Outlook Live when accessing their Hotmail accounts. The company is offering a reduced introductory price of &#36;44.95 through April 19th.
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As many as 18 million Hotmail subscribers will be weaned Monday from a free service that lets them export e-mail to another mail client, under Microsoft MSN&#39;s new spam-fighting plan.
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A Russian mobile-phone operator is the latest service provider to team with Microsoft to offer Windows-based PCs on a subscription basis through the company's Unlimited Potential program.
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Microsoft has announced that it is planning to distribute the low cost stripped down version of Windows XP in Russia, sources say.
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Visit a Russian porn site using IE 6, risk a spyware installation.
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World&#39;s leading software developer Microsoft has announced that it will promote its cheaper and simplified version of WindowsXP in Russia and soon launch a series of marketing
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An Internet Explorer vulnerability first reported yesterday is already getting a workout. Malware utilizing the hole for installation is turning up on various Russian porn sites, with more trouble expected.
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Microsoft Corp., the world&#39;s largest software maker, has expanded its flagship MSN Hotmail internet email service to include European and Japanese domain names, it said on Friday.
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Russia is the fourth nation to participate in Microsoft Corp&#39;s Windows XP Starter Edition pilot program, for first-time PC users in developing technology markets.
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Security experts are warning about an e-mail making the rounds that tells users about a new Microsoft "security update" that turns out to be bogus.
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Microsoft Corp. will begin selling its Outlook e-mail program as a subscription to Hotmail customers, in a bid to persuade people to pay for add-on services and better compete with rivals such as Google Inc. and Yahoo Inc.
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By Anonymous  Microsoft has launched a ramped-up, global hotmail to reach users worldwide, its first major upgrade since 1996. Windows Live hotmail, an adfunded service.will run in 36 languages and give advertisers access to more than 280 million users.
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(InfoWorld) - Hoping to tackle the growing problem of pump-and-dump stock scams Microsoft has quietly filed lawsuits against at least three alleged perpetrators who it says used its MSN Hotmail networks to promote stocks. Hotmail has "received large volumes of unsolicited commercial e-mail messages" promoting stocks for such companiesÂ as Distributed Power, TGC Ventures, China Biolife Enterprises, and Irwin Resources, according to court documents filed during April and May in King County Superior Court in Seattle. Microsoft charges the defendants with violating the federal CAN-SPAM act as well as Washington state consumer protection laws and is seeking unspecified damages, according to the filings. Pump-and-dump e-mail scams are a form of fraud where the criminals purchase stock in a company -- typically an inexpensive penny stock -- and then promote the equity in millions of unsolicited email messages. The technique is one of the more lucrative spamming practices and has been "the fastest growing area in spam" over the past few months, said Craig Schmugar, a threat research manager with McAfees' Avert Labs. Pump-and-dump spam has not only taken up resources and threatened the smooth functioning of Hotmail, but it "continues to result in significant costs to Microsoft," the court filings state. Microsoft executives were not immediately available to comment for this story. Because Microsoft does not know the name of the spammers behind the unsolicited e-mails, it has filed the lawsuits as "John Doe" cases, giving it the power to subpoena information in the case and ultimately name the parties responsible when they are uncovered. It's the latest move in the cat and mouse game between pump-and-dump spammers and the technology companies trying to stop them. Pump-and-dump scams are gaining more attention from criminals and companies like Microsoft for one simple reason: They work. Researchers at Purdue and Oxford Universities recently examined the dynamics of pump-and-dump and found that spammers could realize 5 percent returns in a single day. Because these scams are so lucrative, they've attracted some of the most technically competent spammers to develop new techniques, said Adam O'Donnell, a senior research scientist at Cloudmark. "The pump-and-dump schemes are basically driving spam research and development," he said. Primarily, this research has centered around the creation of templates that can be used by infected PCs to create spam messages and on a form of e-mail known as image spam, O'Donnell said. These image spam messages look just like any other e-mail but are in fact .jpg or .gif images. Image spam is also particularly well-suited to pump-and-dump because the fraudsters don't need victims to click on a link for scam to work. Over the past year, image spammers have developed a variety of techniques to confuse spam filters, said McAfee's Schmugar. They've added colorful backgrounds, wavy text, and filled their messages with nonsense text to try to evade optical character recognition technologies, he said. For example, a recent spam message promoting China Biolife Enterprises, one of the stocks named in Microsoft's suit, contained the following message: "Symbol CBFE Price $1.55 (UP 11.51%) Target $4 Market: Bullish. Strangler minott goodnight bennett rebel rousers." With the jump in pump-and-dump e-mail, O'Donnell said it's no surprise that Microsoft has brought the lawsuits. "Hotmail is heavily used and is viewed by the Web community as one of the most challenging spam environments right now," he said.