Newsmaker: When Microsoft thinks privacy

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have now signed up for, is the recognition that the free flow of information provides tremendous value to users and businesses, and therefore the economy.

What I think they're also starting to understand is this benefit-and-risk tradeoff. If you want to realize the benefits of free information flow, you need to manage the risks that this information flow sometimes creates.

So I think what you'll see, like in many other parts of the world, legislation starts to grow principally because it's about making sure the economic benefits of technology, information flow and the Internet in general are fully realized.

Do you think legislation will help combat spam?
Cullen: In the United States, there were some 3,000 privacy bills that were introduced last year at the state and federal levels. And many of them were technology-based bills, as opposed to behavior-based bills. Where that can lead to problems is, we sometimes run the risk of creating legislation that inhibits the growth or value of technology.

We advise that authorities be very careful with legislation, which can have an extremely important role to play but needs to be done carefully. We need to be careful that we create laws that are reasonable and fair, but most of all, we have the ability to enforce them.

Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates predicted that spam will be history by 2006. Do you think we'll ever see that day?
Cullen: I think we're making some great progress. For example, today the SmartScreen technology that's resident in MSN and Outlook is blocking over 3 billion pieces of mail per day. So this is spam that's not even reaching users' mailboxes. Some of our users of those products have experienced as much as a 90 percent reduction in spam. So we're getting better at it.

We sometimes run the risk of creating legislation that inhibits the growth or value of technology.

What's happening ,though, because the economics really do favor the spammers, they're finding ways to get around those sorts of filters. That's why we're investing so heavily in this area.

Gates proposed the concept of charging for e-mail. Is that going to be a viable solution against spam?
Cullen: It was probably not clearly understood (back then) what we meant by charging. We were describing the concept of changing the economics for the spammers.

Currently, a spammer needs to only get a response of about 0.001 percent of the mail they send out to make money. But if you increase the cost of sending the mail, it adds to the problem (for them). Let's take the example of Dictionary attacks where they randomly pick names or register en masse for Hotmail services. If we put a kind of barrier in front of that which requires some form of human interaction, say, to answer a test question, then a computer can't sign up for 10,000 e-mail accounts at one time.

That's an example of a computational cost that can help prevent spam.

So it may not necessarily be a monetary cost?
Cullen: Absolutely. If it now costs the spammer three servers, instead of one, to handle all the work, you're increasing the cost and, therefore, changing the economic proposition for the spammer. This makes it more difficult for them to do their business. So that's what we really meant in terms of (charging for) the cost of mail.

There's this urban legend that Microsoft, through its automatic software update tool, looks through a personal computer to check for illegal software downloads. Can you clear this up once and for all?
Cullen: We understand that that's a concern, but our interests are about ensuring that people have the most protection for their computers. It's not really important to us what they have on their computers at all. Not only does that not happen, we've established links directly to the privacy notice within the automatic update, so the user always has the ability to look at exactly what the system is doing.  

Eileen Yu of ZDNet Asia reported from Singapore.

More Newsmakers

Trust M$?????

That is an oxymoron. M$ cannot be trusted at all. That is not now, nor has it ever been, on their agenda.

I have idea about spam.

Actually I come up with new idea how to eliminate spam for GOOD,I wonder where is good place to start first to protect it second to have it develop it.Its actualy cheaper then most solutions so far.
Reading this text I can see MS is still using 20-century solution.....My system doesnt block spam,it eliminates it completly.

[katamari]

Just what is...

...a "Microsoft strategist?"

I've never heard of such a preposterous job title. Is it along the same lines as those with "Digital Samurai" as their title over at Google?

The term "strategist" seems to imply there's some sort-of WAR going on. Zhuge Liang would be quite disappointed to find that somehow there's a WAR on SPAMMERS... "FIGHTING THE INVISIBLE ENEMY" would be the title.

[Stating]

Doesn't Even Understand The Problem

This MS guy has got to be kidding. MSN and Outlook are the solutions? What is he smoking? Today alone I was spammed two dozen times by a computer that was infected by Win32.mytob. This spamming zombie computer's intent was to infect my system too. It wasn't to sell me discount Viagra. The infected system's ISP (Birch.net) didn't detect or stop the aberrant activity, and neither did my email provider (Yahoo). My ZoneAlarm software protected me. Microsoft, you get a big fat zero!!!

As long as Microsoft continues to be run by wingtips instead of tennis shoes, the problem will continue. Those guys don't know **** from shineola.