IP: MS Big Brother wants you to help ... and wants you to pay, to boot!

[David Farber <dave@farber.net>]

>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]
>
>===
>
>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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