Microsoft, Google push new plan to combat e-mail scams

That headline sets my 'phishing' detector off.

Heh, yeah... they probably intend to do so at the cost of tightening the corporate yoke around the necks of consumers even more than they do. Well... at least Microsoft probably does.

No, this is actually a good idea that will reduce tons of spam and phsihing attempts for scads of users.

It will also reduce the flow of illicitly obtained funds to China's People's Liberation Army, Russia, Belarus, Cyprus, Nigeria, and etc.

I've noticed Microsoft's mailservers sometimes getting blacklisted for sending spam. Usually just one of them will show up on sorbs or another service.

I laughed like hell the 1st time I got one from "my bank". I have never internet banked. As a matter of fact, when my laptop went kablooey on me back 2010, it was while I was signing up for internet banking. I never got a chance to finish and figured it was a sign to stay away from it

So when I got that 1st e-mail (I've had a few since) I knew right off it was bunk.

The one that really made me laugh was for some French (from France) MMO that I'd never even heard of until then, claiming my account had been flagged for suspicious activity and asking me to re-enter my account details at the provided link