Today's mailbox had five identical messages from dot_net_msgr_svc@msgr.hotmail.com titled "Important Security Update for the .NET Messenger Service". Apparently I have to upgrade MSN Messenger and Windows Messenger because of some security fooferall. I almost assumed this was some scam, but the upgrade site looks real.

Let's enumerate the problems:

  • I don't use MSN Messenger, I use Trillian.
  • WinXP forces me to have MSN Messenger installed whether I want it or not. Did Microsoft compromise my security when they forced their IM system onto my machine?
  • I got 5 different emails to the same address.
  • The email came from hotmail.com, not microsoft.com.
  • The email is titled "Important", thereby almost guaranteeing people will ignore it.
  • The email is sent as HTML but then the contents are just wrapped in a <pre> tag.
  • Why not just use Windows Update?
I'm glad Microsoft is taking security more seriously, but they're going to need to work on their notifications.
techbad
  2003-08-19 14:49 Z