I wonder how Verthex is doing.

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).

Would have been "regret later" or "regret it let".

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.

Who exactly is "tracking the email addresses" and how are they doing it?

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.

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.

This thread needs more stylized drawings of David Silverman.

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.

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.

Except that he's doing more good for the world than your GNU hillbilly idols.

At least he doesn't pick warts off his foot and eat them in the middle of a talk!

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.

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.