The Long Arm of Microsoft 136
eldavojohn writes "Software giant Microsoft is helping the law track down and find phishers and political borders are no boundary for them. From the article, .' This initiative started back in March and has resulted in 129 lawsuits in Europe & the Middle East. Perhaps their legions of lawyers will come to some use for the rest of us but teenagers settling out of court? That reeks of RIAA/MPAA tactics to me."
Torn (Score. But what I fear is that local police just don't have the time and resources to track these guys down. And, on top of that, law enforcement here in the states might find an illegal or rogue server in another country and have no way within their jurisdiction to follow the case across the boarders. That and in some locations, cops are crooked or they don't see the problem of phishing to have any tangible victims.
So while there's a lot of good reasons for Microsoft to do this, I still feel a tiny bit afraid that an already very powerful company is becoming a lot more powerful by gaining international recognition as a crime buster.
So, if you'll entertain me and let my tin-foil hat imagination run wild for a second, say that BitTorrent becomes illegal to use under some country X's laws. Now, I live in country Y (across the world) and I use BitTorrent to retrieve Linux DVD distro images. Microsoft somehow monitors this through my operating system and brings a trial against me in country X. I don't even live there but now I have to go there and defend a lawsuit in that country? That would be a horrible outcome.
Another fear of mine has already occurred
In the end, I really don't think this is the answer to the problem of spam & phishing. I submitted this story in hopes that there'd be some good debate about where the responsibilities of stopping phishing attacks should lie.
Re:Torn (Score:5, Insightful)
If Microsoft wanted to bring a civil case against you in any country, they could do it whether or not they are helping the police gather evidence for criminal cases.
Re:Torn (Score:5, Insightful)
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What I want think we should do is find out who's renting rooms and/or space to these "political boarders". Once we do that it should be easy to evict them and shut them down.
Or are we looking for politcally-biased skate boarders? Always knew those guys were no good...
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Where we == audience?
Re:Torn (Score:4, Insightful)
As far as I am concerned this is vigilante justice. Just as citizens have no business enforcing the law, neither do coporations.
Microsoft's actions are the equivalent of citizens beating up paedophiles. Whether or not its for a good cause it is completely unacceptable behaviour.
Re:Torn (Score:4, Insightful)
If you object to MS getting involved at all, fine. I think for once MS is showing some decent behaviour in criminally targetting large scammers and just slapping down dumb teenagers.
Isn't this the company which everyone derides for NOT playing by legal rules? Now you are unhappy when they do and even show some restraint?
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But there is a problem if law enforcement depends heavily on Microsofts assistance. Then Microsoft has become an integral part of the justice system, not only by executing limited law enforcement tasks (as in the case with labs etcetera working as sub-contractors), but in a position where they have the power to chose which cases should be en
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If you report a crime and the police aren't interested (as they don't think its actually a criminal act) then you can bring a civil case instead and MS are doing this with the lesser offences.
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Huge problem (Score:3, Interesting)
Sure, everybody is still entitled
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Phishing, yes. Spam, certainly. Kiddie porn? Out of control? Don't believe everything the press feeds you.
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I was in the porn industry until recently. Pedophiles are actively shunned by the mainstream porn community. In fact, the main stream porn industry regularly reports these people to gov't agencies. I know that I have personally, tipped off the FBI countless times about kiddie porn. There's a lot of it out there.
Re:Torn (Score:5, Insightful)
You claim to wear a tin-foil hat...
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And once they have achieved a good reputation as a crime buster they go after people violating M$ patents - voice of the public opinion: "Fine, these bastards who steal IP deserve that!".
Another instance of Big Brother.
CC.
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You think companies like citibank, wells fargo, BOA, and 5/3rd bank and others who are the ones be defamed would go after these people with uzis. I think the phish people need to be punished, and terrorized.
W Does M$ really have altruistic motives? Where will money be made here. I am more worried about positive political feedback (i.e. bribes) for this 'free' service.
As far
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I applaud Microsoft's effor
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In other words, if somone in another country sues you under law X, and you live and operate i
You must be kidding ?? (Score.
The issue at hand is identity theft, the police won't prosecute for crimes like this any more than if someone searched through your garbage looking for personal information. The victim has to bring the case himself.
I have absolutely zero problem with Microsoft filing suit against those phishers.
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> The victim has to bring the case himself.
Are you sure on that? I wonder who brought those cases for murder.
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> the police won't prosecute for crimes
The difference between murder and stealing your bank details is that you can give me your bank details legally, you can't give me your life legally. (and suicide is illegal, believe it or not) Im other words, when I break into your apartment and steal your WII, you can forgive me.
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Isn't this what happened to Spamhaus? They got sued in the US and lost but don't have to pay jack because they're not under US law.
Unless you actually went to that country, you're probably perfectly safe.
-Z
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MS - Global Policeman (except of itself.....)
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> free software, tools and maybe even hardware to catch these guys
Hardware and software are not the key things most police forces are lacking in pursuing white-color crime perpetrated via the internet. The key things most police forces are lacking for this are training, manpower, jurisdiction, and training.
Throwing hardware and software at the problem would be like throwing money at the problems in the education system. It's v
Political boarders? (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:Political boarders? (Score:4, Insightful)
It's the phrase "teenagers settling out of court" that worries me. It's not necessarily that their motives are impure just that their tactics are kind of dirty. As in, we-probably-can't-pin-this-on-you-so-we'll-force-
Re:Political boarders? (Score:4, Insightful)
It's also hard to see how one could be a phisher _without_ criminal intent, so I question what Microsoft is really up to here.
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Actually, if you read some of the phishing come-ons, even allowing for English not being the native language of the author, there's a certain adolescent simplicity to a lot of them. Many of the attempts I've seen were clearly made by unsophisticated minds - they reek of script-kiddieness.
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this is David from Microsoft's anti-phishing global initiative. I have evidence that little Johnny has been working with the Russian mafia to obtain identify credentials from internet connected computers across the world. If you do not pay us $2000 by return (click this link - htps://123.456.88.12/paypal.com?id=123234 - to pay saecurely online now) and avoid any legal prosecution.
Thank you for your cooperation.
Frank.
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How many teenagers do you know that set up and run phishing sites by themselves? Sounds like these are kids taking the fall for other people.
I don't know about phishing sites, but teenagers have often been involved in computer-crime cases.
For example, there's Sven Jaschan [wikipedia.org], who was 18 years old when he was arrested in conjunction with writing the NetSky and Sasser worms. There's also Ehud Tenenbaum [wikipedia.org], who was also 18 years at the time he was arrested for hacking into various Pentagon and Knesset computer systems. Chad Davis [wikipedia.org] spent time in prison for hacking into the White House and U.S. Army web sites. He was 19. And of course there's Adrian Lamo [wikipedia.org], w
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Re:Political boarders? (Score:5, Insightful)
I sure as hell do.
Re:Political boarders? (Score:4, Informative)
I would, if that's what was happening in this case. It certainly is NOT what is happening in this case. They're helping out Keystone Kops in this case. They're not prosecuting anybody. They're working within the system.
If you want to get your panties in a bunch over corporations being involved in law enforcement, then you should read a bit more. You should know that many prisons in the United States, are in fact, run by private corporations [aca.org]. THAT is a "corporation acting as law enforcement". MS helping cops to track down phishers is not.
Re:Political boarders? (Score:4, Informative)
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Boarders? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Boarders? (Score:4, Funny)
Avril Lavigne.
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Hover boarders.
They're friends with Griff and the gang.
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political boarders (Score:5, Funny)
The o is not even close to the a on the keyboard, have to wonder...
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One Microsoft Way (Score:3, Insightful)
It's like bottom-up lobbying. Where our rights meet the people who protect them. Brought to you by Microsoft.
Re:One Microsoft Way (Score:4, Informative)
I'm surprised you didn't accuse Microsoft of paying all those physers to set up their site just to sue them later and look like they're fighting crime. It'd have been a good end for your sci-fi relate.
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It's not Microsoft's job to "fight crime", not in person. It can fight crime by suing, by offering technical support to police investigations, expert witnesses. Most importantly, by closing security holes (
Your PD uses a lot more than just MS products. (Score:2)
So, elect local and state officials that will put enough budget behind your law enforcement agencies to make such support irrelevent. I doubt that will have much impact on where most of the phishing originates, though, which is overseas. By the way, if you think for a moment that companies like Motorola or General Motors or Ford or Taser don't have just as much of sell-to, but also be-generous-and-supportive-to relationship with city
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If we believe this map [websense.com] and if we are African, Australian or Eurasian, overseas is indeed worst.
CC.
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I'm talking about cops outside the US,
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In my days, this was called legislative power.
CC.
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CC.
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CC.
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OT: while I've got a German with whom I seem to be able to communicate fairly well, would you mind commenting on a discussion I'm watching in a totally different discussion site [dailykos.com]?
Are you familiar with the term "jerry-rigged", an americanism meaning "poor quality, complicated, hasty construction without sensible design from inappropriate materials"? Do you think it insults Germans? I'm sorry if it does and if repeating it might have insulted you, but I think it is an insult, and I'd l
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No I am not familiar (beyond my skills of the idiom). But the explanation you give reminded me of American cars (no insult intended either - and this I wrote before being aware of the jerry-semantics).
As I do not know the term - and must only infer that "jerry" somehow refers to Germans (looked it up meanwhile and found that it is German soldier) - I feel I cannot be insulted (and I guess that there are very few of "us Germans" who know the term). On top of it, it may be the appropriate te
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Thanks for helping out.
Phishers a parallel with P2P? Give me a break. (Score:5, Insightful)
Comparing this to the RIAA cases? Give me a break. That's like comparing a rapist with someone taking a second glance at someone they find attractive.
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Not quite. It's more like comparing a rapist with a kid who steals a Snickers bar from a store. They're both illegal, but their morality is not comparable.
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And the big difference (Score:2)
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In 98 of the cases it was a criminal case. In the remaining cases the culprits had no existing record and were teenagers, so they chose not to pursue criminal cases. Sorry, but it sounds like they let them off easy.
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Maybe next time you want someone to take you seriously, you shouldn't compare downloading music to phishing, because that's the sort of thing that makes people think you're either too stupid to realize the difference, or simply resorting to grandstanding in order to try to make people think you're far more clever than you actually are.
Just a thought.
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Are you kidding? Teenagers are capable of quite a lot you know, and teenagers are absolutely capable of criminal actions, especially when it's nothing more than sending out some emails against a template site: This really isn't the pinnacle of criminal enterprises.
Your c
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No.. (Score:5, Insightful)
No, it only shows that teenagers do all sorts of things online, including copyright infringement and phishing. Or are you saying that teenagers shouldn't be tried under the laws of the country?
Tried? (Score:1)
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Okay, maybe I'm dense. How do you force someone to settle out of court? Can you explain, please?
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That's it. Your victim agrees to pay you $X (or whatever other conditions you get him to agree to) and in exchange you drop your lawsuit. A judge never evaluates it.
Throw the book at them (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Throw the book at them (Score:4, Insightful)
They are not guilty until a court says so.
Also, Jail is a bad place to put a teenager, and it is counter productive for society. It si better to give them a on jail sentence, and then remove it from there record after it has been served. Too many kids do stupid things just because they are kids. It does society no good to let a stupid act ruin someones future.
I did something stupid with computers in the 80's. If I ahd gone to fail I can't imagine I wuld be able to get a job today that pays well, and it turn puts more taxes into the system.
And please do not rebut with "so if they killed someone..." argument. We are talking about a non violent crime here. Keep it in proportion.
Finally, most 'evidence' of this nature points to an ip address, not a person. Something that must be dealt with carefully.
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Would feel differently about a teenager who attempted to defraud people of their money in person as opposed to via the web? What is the difference? What if they were adults instead of teenagers? They are trying to con people for their own enrichment. They should get the same punishment no matter what medium they use for their crime.
The war on tactics (Score:4, Insightful)
This isn't the RIAA (Score:5, Insightful)
Those are much smaller settlements than the RIAA is asking for, and I dare say that they either don't cover, or barely cover the legal fees that Microsoft incurs from these actions.
This doesn't look at all like the kind of profit-making enterprise the RIAA is engaging in. Rather, it looks like MS is trying to deter criminals and criminals-in-training from ripping people off.
Of course, they are doing it for their own business reasons. It makes them look bad when people get scammed because of security vulnerabilities in IE. But I don't see how you can draw an evil motivation out of it.
Article Bias (Score:2, Interesting)
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WGA finally useful. (Score:2, Interesting)
Do political boarders pay rent? (Score:2)
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Thank you so very much for pointing this out, as the rest of us "Slashies" are far too stupid to have figured out what he meant by the context. Would you like a hero cookie?
Aikon-
Lottery scam (419) (Score:3, Interesting)
I get a reply that I should contact the local police. As if I would be interested to waste my time.
It is *their* name that gets abused, and I help them by forwarding scam mails they can use as evidence, but that is all the effort I am going to make.
Woe is nigerians and teens (Score:1)
DAMN YOU MICROSOFT, I LOOK FORWARD TO "HELLO DEAR SIR" AND "UK LOTTERY INVESTIGATION" EMAILS, THEY MAKE ME FEEL IMPORTANT!!
Not To Me (Score:4, Insightful)
Not to me. Filesharing doesn't impact me personally, nor likely the poor starving recording artists who aren't going to get their money whether or not the RIAA and the record companies actually collect it.
Pishing crimes are far worse on my personal scale of the sewer that the Internet has become, and anything that makes those criminals suffer is a Good Thing.
The still even longer arm of TARGET. (Score:2, Informative)
So if you think it's bad Microsoft is now policing the net, well did you know that
the _SCUM_ behind your friendly TARGET store may well someday hold a cold barrel
to the back of your neck?
>>> Retailer Target branches out into police work le/2006/01/28/AR2006012801268_pf.html [washingtonpost.com]
"Target is pushing forward a different model of corporate giving,"
Much as I dislike M$..... (Score:4, Insightful) [rcmp-grc.gc.ca]
Before we go bashing M$, maybe we should at least give an "attaboy" as they occasionally do good.
Look at the live situation of phishing (Score:3, Informative)
Here is the nightmare situation of current phishing all with some https: hosts (rare), decimal IPs, Geocities hosted Yahoo phishing pages which sends mail to Gmail (yes!) etc. [phishtank.com]
Watch and get amazed everyday, for help, submit or verify the open data.
The situation is already out of hand IMHO.
Speaking of Phishing (Score:4, Funny)
Zonk: okay okay, time to post some slashdot stories. What to do what to do...
Zonk hits a button and instantly hundreds of submissions appear on his 52 inch computer screen
Zonk: Computer, scan for submissions relating to Microsoft or Bill gates. Group by content.
The computer buzzes and whirs for two seconds and the display changes
Computer: Algorythmic analysis shows 13 distinct possible stories. List is as follows:
1) Melinda Gates has alien baby
2) Windows Vista kills small puppies
3) Steve Ballmer makes anti-semetic remarks at PC Expo
4) Bill Gates declares "All your iPod are belong to Zune!" in internal memo.
Zonk: *abruptly cuts of the computer* Run believability algorythm 259. Display only titles a typical slashdot reader might believe as real.
Computer: Two titles remain. List is as follows.
1) Microsoft launches new Anti-linux propoganda
2) Microsoft assists in anti-phishing efforts
Zonk: Hmmmmm, run inflamatory index algorythm 86 on both titles.
Computer: Complete. Report is as follows:
Title group: Microsoft launches new Anti-linux propoganda
Inflamatory index: 23
Stories show high incidence of anti-microsoft sentiment and pro-linux stories. There is a high degree of correlation in past stories, leading to ideas that it's been rehashed too often. This may lead to a high level of "I've seen this damn story before" posts by readers. However, due to the extreme number of this type of post, index is relatively low as topic is had reached the "JonKatz" threshold of repitition, and most readers will probably ignore it.
Would you like me to run an accuracy scan index on the articles to see if this article group may be true?
Zonk: nono I don't care about that, continue with report.
Computer: Continuing with report:
Title group: Microsoft assists in anti-phishing efforts
Inflamatory index: 67
Stories show low incidence of Anti-microsoft sentiment and no pro linux sentiment. Articles appear to case MS in a good light. All factors lead to low inflamatory index except for one. One or more articles express anti-RIAA/MPAA sentiment for no particular reason. Existance of extreme, unwarranted attempt to link article to RIAA/MPAA leads to incredibly high index.
Zonk: hot damn! Scan all submissions and run inflamatory index on each submission. List submission with highest chance of "WTF this is nothing like the RIAA/MPAA."
Computer: Article returned: "The Long Arm of Microsoft."
Zonk: Sweet! Computer post at 11:53 AM with no additions or changes. Open up T1 lines 4 and 7 to accomodate the extra connections and prepare the fire supression systems. That will phish a good number of comments and help us get our hits up for the day.
And that, ladies and gentleman, is how and why slashdot posts articles with stupidity like that RIAA comment
Accurate...almost (Score:2)
We could try this (Score:1)
Turkey =[ (Score:1)
All I know... (Score:2)
...is when I blocked a range of IP addresses in Shanghai, my phishing attacks dropped dramatically. Unless MSFT can set up an enforcement shop in China, which would be a pay-per-view event all on its own, then the worst of the lot is going to keep operating.
Whatever else MSFT can do to help phishing and spam...more power to them. Seems like a largely token effort. A PR project more than any real attempt at policing the internet.
If I was going to fight Redmond on anything it would be their crapass EUL
Right... (Score:1)
Why? What would you do if you found a teenage phisher? Just say "oh, it's a bad thing to try to con people out of their life savings but... it's a kid... Let's just tell him "no, no, no" and let it go at that... I hope he hasn't ruined too many lives..."
Give me a break! Not only does this NOT "reek" or RIAA/MPAA there isn't even a scent. Being a teenager isn't a get out of jail/juvi free card! Their still are consequence
Thanks, Microsoft... (Score:2)
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