It all started on November 18, 1997, when the guy sitting beside him in the computer lab received a get-rich-quick email, one of the first examples of spam that either of them had seen. “I can come up with something better than that,” Mack boasted. Three minutes later, Bill Gates’ email-tracing program was born. Mack thought it was funny enough to send to a friend at Loras College in Dubuque, with “bill gates here” in the subject line. It made the guy laugh, so he passed it on.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
Interesting article.
\nBTW – If you’re going to send these emails on to your entire mailing list, by all means use BCC instead of the To or CC fields. I went through my copy of the MS email tracking message and found 108<\/em> email addresses. If I was a spammer, I just found 108 new victims. By using BCC, you only annoy your friends with useless hoaxes without exposing them to a spam risk.
\nBTW 2 – In addition to the usual email spam I get offering to make parts of my anatomy larger, get me low cost better prescriptions drugs to make that anatomy perform, software at low, low prices and other, uh, interesting products<\/em>; I’m now getting spam offering to help me train my dog. Huh? Anyone else getting those?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The other day I got one of those email forwards. You’ve probably gotten this one too. It’s the one that says that Microsoft is testing an email tracking program andRead More The Microsoft Moneypot<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[11],"tags":[],"yoast_head":"\nThe Microsoft Moneypot - salguod.net<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/salguod.net\/blog\/2005\/05\/httpwiredvigwir.shtml\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"The Microsoft Moneypot - salguod.net\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"The other day I got one of those email forwards. You’ve probably gotten this one too. 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Do you know this person????? I found his camera at the Ohio State \/ Youngstown State game and am trying to return it to him... Please send along to anyone who might know other OSU fans !! Not only\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Goofiness"","block_context":{"text":"Goofiness","link":"https:\/\/salguod.net\/blog\/goofiness"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.salguod.net\/weblog\/images\/osugame014_salguod_net_image_1.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":254,"url":"https:\/\/salguod.net\/blog\/2005\/01\/interesting.shtml","url_meta":{"origin":330,"position":1},"title":"Interesting …","author":"Doug Schaefer","date":"January 20, 2005","format":false,"excerpt":"After getting the text selection issue worked out for the (assumed) majority of my readers who use Internet Explorer, I checked my webstats and found that more of you actually use Mozilla (Firefox) than IE. 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Two column layout with a wider main column, categories and archives moved to separate\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Salguod.net stuff"","block_context":{"text":"Salguod.net stuff","link":"https:\/\/salguod.net\/blog\/salguod-net-stuff"},"img":{"alt_text":"salguod.net Through Firefox","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.salguod.net\/weblog\/assets_c\/2009\/03\/salguod.net_through_firefox-thumb-500x393-1385.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":385,"url":"https:\/\/salguod.net\/blog\/2005\/09\/ice.shtml","url_meta":{"origin":330,"position":3},"title":"ICE – In Case Of Emergency","author":"Doug Schaefer","date":"September 10, 2005","format":false,"excerpt":"I got this forwarded to me from my wife a while back. I checked it out on Snopes, and it's legit. They point out some drawbacks to the proposal, but it still sems like a pretty good idea. It's a rare instance of an email forward that's worth the energy\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Family and Friends"","block_context":{"text":"Family and Friends","link":"https:\/\/salguod.net\/blog\/family-and-friends"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":317,"url":"https:\/\/salguod.net\/blog\/2005\/04\/notifications.shtml","url_meta":{"origin":330,"position":4},"title":"Notifications","author":"Doug Schaefer","date":"April 26, 2005","format":false,"excerpt":"I've added comment notification subscriptions to my blog. There's a form on each entry to receive an email when there are new comments on that entry or to receive an email when I post a new entry. Each email notice includes a link for managing your subscriptions. That means that\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Salguod.net stuff"","block_context":{"text":"Salguod.net stuff","link":"https:\/\/salguod.net\/blog\/salguod-net-stuff"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":220,"url":"https:\/\/salguod.net\/blog\/2004\/11\/letterboxing.shtml","url_meta":{"origin":330,"position":5},"title":"Letterboxing","author":"Doug Schaefer","date":"November 1, 2004","format":false,"excerpt":"Well. my wife did it again (twice in one weekend!). She got me out of the house to experience something new, in this case Letterboxing Letterboxing is basically a scavanger hunt run by stangers. Someone has hidden a box somewher and you have to follow the clues tto find it.\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Family and Friends"","block_context":{"text":"Family and Friends","link":"https:\/\/salguod.net\/blog\/family-and-friends"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/salguod.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/330"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/salguod.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/salguod.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/salguod.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/salguod.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=330"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/salguod.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/330\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1943,"href":"https:\/\/salguod.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/330\/revisions\/1943"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/salguod.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=330"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/salguod.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=330"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/salguod.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=330"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}