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What do you people say ?
If it were a real MS email, instead of "if you are a Microsoft Windows user" they would have said "If we cannot verify you have All Genuine Microsoft Products, we will hunt you down like a dog and sue you until your bank account smokes".
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@bc
I should make that my new desktop...
Who teaches English in India? They use beautifully exaggerated translations like "repent."
Or as a GA, I heard this way too many times: "I have a doubt" in place of the more appropriate "I have a question."
Who teaches English in India?
An Indian.
BTW how are sure that this email originated from India.
BTW how are sure that this email originated from India.
It's obviously not written by a native English speaker.
In my experience, Indians (at least the ones in the tech field) tend to speak and write a distinct mix of formal and exaggerated English with mostly good, but slightly complex grammar using British spelling.
If you are a Windows user, they probably can do this anyway...why need to tell you and pay you...suckers! 
Its a ponzi scheme. That one is a chain letter.
Chain letter yes, ponzi scheme no. They are phishing for people's addresses.
Do you have any idea what a ponzi scheme is?
It does not describe a Ponzi scheme. 
It is simply a describing a pyramid scheme. (Or a MLM, but they are basically the same thing.)
Thats what a ponzi scheme is Matthew. Thats what the chain letter does except the pyramid scheme may have multiple "downlines" instead of a single downline in a ponzi scheme. Think of a pyramid scheme as a nuclear chain reaction where three neutrons are produced for each atom split. Those 3 new neutrons then create 9 new neutrons and so forth. I'm sure you've seen Amway.
You are completely wrong, like usual. Double check at which page your encyclopedia is open.
A Ponzi scheme is specifically about an investment. You invest money into my bogus company. I pay you interest by giving you part of the money from future investors. This email chain letter has nothing to do with any of that.
A Ponzi scheme is specifically about an investment. You invest money into my bogus company. I pay you interest by giving you part of the money from future investors. The email chain letter has nothing to do with any of that.
Yeah but each investor has to find another investor and subsequently theres a chain of people.
A Ponzi scheme is a fraudulent investment operation that pays returns to its investors from their own money or the money paid by subsequent investors
It did NOT ask anyone to invest any money. It said it would ask them for their address in two weeks time after they spammed that crap out to the rest of their address book thinking they would get butt loads of money from Microsoft.
Step 1. Remove foot from mouth.
Step 2. Wash out mouth (your foot was in it ).
With that horrendous design, images and colors... it's difficult/impossible to don't get it as a junk "letter". If MS send me someday an e-mail like that, I'll trow my entire PC (monitor included) from my window, and would start using Linux.
Yeah but each investor has to find another investor and subsequently theres a chain of people.
It's not on the investor to find more people, it's on the person running the scam. Investors may tell people about the investment because they think it's great, but that is not an intrinsic part of a Ponzi scheme.
But even if a pyramid were part of a Ponzi scheme, your logic would go like this:
Egypt has pyramids.
That letter has pyramids.
That letter is Egyptian.
The investment comes from microsoft but that email still creates a chain of fucking people. It becomes a tree no matter how you look at it.
Matthew I worked in mlms in my early 20's I know this stuff better than you could code.
It becomes a tree no matter how you look at it.
Every time you post, I laugh, and I tell five people, and they laugh, and they each tell five people.
I can only conclude that you are a Ponzi scheme because of the chain of (illegible) people. 
I can only conclude that you are a Ponzi scheme because of the chain of (illegible) people.
You know probably 10 people matthew. I know hundreds.
This could go on for a while, but I got myself a quote... so I'm content. 
The investment comes from microsoft but that email still creates a chain of ing people.
Again,
A Ponzi scheme is a fraudulent investment operation that pays returns to its investors from their own money or the money paid by subsequent investors
So Microsoft is going to ask people to pay back the investments they are supposedly making by paying you to spam people?
1. Microsoft didn't send this.
2. They're not going to pay anyone. Hence no investment is being made.
3. The people wouldn't pay Microsoft back, so Microsoft would not be making any returns on their 'investment' in any way.
4. This would have to be the most backwards ponzi scheme there is. A ponzi scheme is where people are looking to get you to invest in their fraudulent operation, not where they invest in you hoping you will defraud someone else to give them a return.
5. 
The letter sounds like a threat and is signed with an Indian name. That guy probably failed phishing 101
I wonder how Verthex is doing.
I suppose they are collecting adresses of windows users to sell the list. 
Well the two things that jumped out at me as that not being wrote by MS or a native English speaking person (besides the name).
If you ignore this you will repent later."
Would have been "regret later" or "regret it let".
....then send you a cheque.
Instead of check? And then, of course, Melquir Sagayarajan at the bottom. Nothing more than a way to spam emails and the sad part is that a lot of people will actually do what it says whether they believe it or not.
This email is going to make me rich. I'm going to create a heap of new email addresses and just keep forwarding it to myself. I reckon I could easily make several thousand dollars a day by doing that. Take that, Bill Gates! Not Fake™.
Who exactly is "tracking the email addresses" and how are they doing it?
Who exactly is "tracking the email addresses" and how are they doing it?
This is a sarcastic/rhetorical question, right? This lie just makes it seem that you'll get the money.
This is a sarcastic/rhetorical question, right?
Several people now have said that was the purpose of the email. So I'm wondering how they think it is possible.
These types of emails are usually either:
a joke with no purpose
a research/marketing experiment (tracking IPs by external image requests)
a transport for an attached virus
They are only phishing scams if there is some sort of massive spam follow up asking for personal details. (The hope is that the people on the attackers' huge spam list have gotten the chain letter in the near past from a trusted friend.) This email makes a promise of a future email from "Microsoft," which sounds like a phishing scam is coming. So yes, I'm answering my own question so the others don't think about it too hard. 
I thought Gatesy left Microsoft a couple of years ago.
I thought Gatesy left Microsoft a couple of years ago.
Well, yes, he was working too hard, now he has more time to sit back and think about overall strategy, if only Ballmer would calm down and listen.
Actually "cheque" is ok in the UK, so up yours.
This thread needs more stylized drawings of David Silverman.
so up yours.
That is fairly unique in the queens english. It gets said in Australia too. 
I received that same email in the late 90's except it was all text, of course. I fell for it and I'm still waiting for my check.
Some addresses are here:
http://groups.google.com/group/opensocial-api/browse_thread/thread/ab4193be27030c8f
(if they are useable when "..." is taken out)
Some addresses are here:
Only because somebody was stupid enough to send it to a public, indexed mailing list.
And no, the addresses on that page are not usable unless you go through the CAPTCHA.
Only because somebody was stupid enough to send it to a public, indexed mailing list.
Somebody always is.
That's one thing I like about GNU Mailman - in my experience, it's excellent at detecting chain letters, and when it does it flags them for moderator approval. Which in turn flags the sender for written and/or verbal abuse from me.
Well, yes, he was working too hard, now he has more time to sit back and think about overall strategy
Except that he's doing more good for the world than your GNU hillbilly idols. 
He has you on his payroll, eh? You know perfectly well his half-baked crap has held the IT world back for years, even now Stuxnet is cramming the intertubes with crap.
At least he doesn't pick warts off his foot and eat them in the middle of a talk!
No, he just holds his knees and rocks back and forth in a autistic fugue when he's being called on his underhanded ways by the court system.
Neither a ponzi scheme nor a pyramid scheme as they both require investors. That is just a phishing attempt. As you forward that email it is normally Cc'ed to the company that sent it so they have tons of emails to spam with their product later.
Actually "cheque" is ok in the UK
My wife keeps her cheques in her fanny pack
I just love American/British differences in the language.
Actually "cheque" is ok in the UK
Yes, but Microsoft is an American company so it would be odd that they would send an email using the UK spelling of check. Secondly, they normally, at least from the emails I received, seldom have a person's name on the bottom like it had.
Whenever I have to deal with Microsoft I go to Paris, and they don't even use American accents let alone American spelling.
Neither a ponzi scheme nor a pyramid scheme as they both require investors. That is just a phishing attempt. As you forward that email it is normally Cc'ed to the company that sent it so they have tons of emails to spam with their product later.
Forwarding an E-mail should not CC anyone by default. 
I've always assumed that the process relies on the forwards with unmodified copies of original messages, To: and Cc: headers included, eventually making the rounds back to somebody involved through chance alone. The majority of messages probably don't, but I'm sure enough do to make it worthwhile. They probably just recruit regular people through "get rich working from home" schemes to forward forwards that they receive to some company. People are greedy and ignorant. It would be effortless to convince them to do it for very little reward (most probably wouldn't even understand it).
It has to be real, it says not fake right in the letter. Could they say not fake if it was fake? ML, how much are you paying us to respond to this thread?
It has to be real, it says not fake right in the letter. Could they say not fake if it was fake?
Don't bring those religious arguments into this thread...
Forwarding an E-mail should not CC anyone by default.
Really? Odd, I've had several emails I've replied to for my son's school and it automatically put the senders and all the included emails to the Cc part of the mail with only the sender in the To field .
"Reply To All" != "Forward".
Even more odd, just replied to another one and did it. They may not be the same but just forwarded the same email to my live.com account and it also had the Cc field filled. Oh well, I only reply or forward anything about once a week anyways. The rest of the week I just delete things.