Shoutbox

I can certainly see and understand certain reasons behind that request and why they don't want to see such scripts (has to do with security and a form of phising; remember that messenger is mostly used by young people). But removing them is indeed not going to solve these issues completely, at best it might 'slow down' such abuse a bit maybe.

some of those scripts had bugs in them and weren't very well made anyways imho

PS: what about the attached scripts in threads?

I don't understand how removing these scripts will solve anything, if someone wanted to clone a contact they can do it a number of ways and these scripts wouldn't be one of them, they would just use a fake email site to spoof the contacts email address using a phisher.

IMO, there should be more education towards it and less trying to prevent it.

quote:

---

Originally posted by krissy-afc
IMO, there should be more education towards it and less trying to prevent it.

---

"Educating" WLM users to deal with clone scripts (aka third party software) is outside of the WLM support area...

quote:

---

Originally posted by Spunky

quote:

---

Originally posted by krissy-afc
IMO, there should be more education towards it and less trying to prevent it.

---

"Educating" WLM users to deal with clone scripts (aka third party software) is outside of the WLM support area...

---

No, i mean how to spot people cloning, phishing and stuff.

quote:

---

Originally posted by Th3rmal
Probably happened because someone pissed off a guy at M$ by imitating him using the CeX script

---

rofl, so true

This is just a lot of c**p , or course they won't solve anything by doing this because not only the won't stop scripts to be downloaded (they just prohibited plus to host them) but they won't stop people from doing what they want, even less if all they want can be done by copy-pasting...

Either way this makes even less sense when you come to think that ANYONE who actually downloads and install a messenger script and learns how to use it ("/anything") has some degree of expertise (common users just don't to that on their own) and so it won't present a problem that the scrip is no longer here.

And even if they were to be common users I got 9,200 matches for "cex clone" on google (yes, with quotes), which means they will have to send those 9,200 emails and try and get an action, or even a response from any of those sites.

I haven't given any maintenance to my script lately and I wasn't making any money out of it, but it makes me mad that MS takes such an stupid decision based on.... well whatever they were actually based on, and sensurating the work of others, I'm a big MS fan, but when they do stuff like this it makes me wonder...

quote:

---

Originally posted by krissy-afc

quote:

---

Originally posted by Spunky

quote:

---

Originally posted by krissy-afc
IMO, there should be more education towards it and less trying to prevent it.

---

"Educating" WLM users to deal with clone scripts (aka third party software) is outside of the WLM support area...

---

No, i mean how to spot people cloning, phishing and stuff.

---

And what did you think I meant?

quote:

---

Originally posted by Spunky

quote:

---

Originally posted by krissy-afc

quote:

---

Originally posted by Spunky

quote:

---

Originally posted by krissy-afc
IMO, there should be more education towards it and less trying to prevent it.

---

"Educating" WLM users to deal with clone scripts (aka third party software) is outside of the WLM support area...

---

No, i mean how to spot people cloning, phishing and stuff.

---

And what did you think I meant?

---

Sorry, got mixed up .

Sounds more like a moral issue to me (which I could perfectly understand) than a technical issue. Aka an "it's not because something is possible that it should be made available to the masses" issue.... So, that it would still be possible to do it manually has got little to do with it.

analogy: you can write your own viruses manually from scratch, yet virus toolkits, which can be used by any script kiddy without any programming knowledge, do exist but you wont find them on 'legit' sites either.

The combination of DP, name, color, etc is indeed a kind of identity for users. Stealing/copying all that can therefore indeed be seen as a form of identity theft, especially if it is abused towards PC-illiterate people.

Tools which make such abuse easy/easier are indeed sometimes a pest. And although they are not illegal or breaking any eula or whatever, the question could be asked if it would be a good thing to make such tools available to people, including people who are not full of good intentions.

Preventing the masses to get their hands on such tools via a site which has millions of visitors might be a first step although it wont solve the issue completely of course.

On the other hand, I'm also wondering how that decision has been taken and by whom exactly. I mean, it could have been a lightly taken decision (in our eyes), mainly based upon the name "cloning" which is very associated with identity theft by someone at MS who does not exactly know what those scripts actually do, and more importantly don't.

In short: I wouldn't immediatly dismiss such a decision as "being crap" as there a some things to say about it. But I do want to know a bit more details about it though, like who, why, how and when this decision was taken...

Be sure I'll ask about all this on the upcoming MVP summit. Although I would be surprised if I'm able to talk to the right people about that.

------

krissy, spunky: MS does a lot of effort to educate people regarding phising and other stuff though. There are a lot of sites, blogs and articles which explain what is what and how to deal with such stuff, endorsed and made by MS. So they don't only try to prevent stuff, they actually do both.

eg: some very recent articles (mostly in dutch though):
http://www.microsoft.com/belux/nl/protect/yourself/default.mspx
http://www.microsoft.com/belux/nl/protect/yoursel...l/communities.mspx
http://www.microsoft.com/belux/nl/protect/product...self/senderid.mspx
http://www.microsoft.com/belux/nl/protect/family/...vities/gaming.mspx
http://windowslivewire.spaces.live.com/Blog/cns!2...641D59!42740.entry