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‘Maga No Need Pay’: Nigeria Gets Creative to Fight Cyber Scams
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Posted by Tim Cranton
Associate General Counsel
This week, a new pop song hits the airwaves in West Africa with a highly unusual message: Don’t be seduced by cybercrime.
Cybercrime is a global issue, but perhaps no form of cybercrime has been more associated with a region than the advance fee fraud collectively known as “Nigeria” or “419” scams (419 is the section of the Nigerian Criminal Code dealing with fraud). Through schemes such as fake lotteries, bogus inheritances, romantic relationships, investment opportunities or – infamously – requests for assistance from “officials,” scammers promise an elusive fortune in exchange for advance payments.
West Africa is by no means the only source of these scams, but the region is stepping up to address their impact in a variety of creative ways.
419 scams have taken root in Nigeria’s popular culture. Scammers enjoy a rebellious, “cool” mystique, even producing songs and music videos that celebrate their own audacity. At the same time, 419 scam victims around the world are often stigmatized as naïve or gullible, which discourages many from coming forward.
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Microsoft Settlement to Fund $60 Million for Eligible Public Schools in Iowa
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Posted by Rich Wallis
Deputy General Counsel
Hundreds of public schools in Iowa will soon begin receiving approximately $60 million for education technology as part of the settlement of a class-action lawsuit against Microsoft in the state. Schools with a high percentage of students coming from low-income families are eligible to receive the funds, a provision Microsoft specifically negotiated to help bridge the technology gap that exists for low-income students.
This is a positive resolution of competition law concerns first raised in the 1990s. When we began settlement discussions in these cases several years ago, we sought to structure each settlement to support education. Microsoft has long worked to bridge the “digital divide” between those students and teachers who have access to the latest technology, and those who do not. Beginning with the earliest antitrust class-action settlements, such as Montana in 2003, we pushed to provide a significant portion of unclaimed proceeds to benefit schools serving students eligible for free or reduced-price lunches. When the case in Iowa reached a point where settlement was possible, we insisted on the same basic structure. As part of this approach to settling antitrust class-action claims, Microsoft has provided over $600 million in technology vouchers to schools in 19 states and the District of Columbia over the past six years.
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Chinese Consumers Speak Out Against Software Piracy
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Posted by David Finn
Associate General Counsel
Today is Consumer Action Day – a 24-hour period when we highlight the hundreds of education and enforcement initiatives around the globe designed to protect consumers from the risks of pirated and counterfeit software.
The harm done to consumers by pirated software is clearer now than ever before. Microsoft has experienced a surge of voluntary reports – more than 150,000 in the past two years – from people who unwittingly purchased counterfeit software riddled with viruses or malware. One of the most notable attributes of these reports is that the largest percentage – more than one-quarter– came from consumers in China.
China has struggled with software piracy for many years. Still, despite the efforts of the Chinese government, the software piracy rate in China stands today at 80 percent. We have long had a sense of what this means in terms of losses not only to Microsoft, but also to the Chinese economy; published studies indicate that lowering the piracy rate by 10 points would create more than $20 billion in economic growth, over 300,000 new jobs, and $1.5 billion in taxes for the Chinese economy each year.
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Office Team Steps Up Efforts to Protect Customers from Pirated Software
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Posted by Keith Beeman
General Manager, Genuine Software Initiative
As part of Microsoft’s on-going commitment to combat the spread of pirated and counterfeit software, and to protect our customers and partners, the Office team today made two important announcements.
First, we expanded the Office Genuine Advantage Notifications program into 13 more countries, upping the total to 41 countries where the voluntary program offers end users enhanced protection against the risks of using non-genuine copies of Office, such as viruses and malfunctioning code.
In addition, we announced that Office 2010 will offer technology managers new tools, built on our Software Protection Platform (SPP), to better control how volume-licensing keys are activated and used as they roll out Office 2010 in their organizations. The introduction of SPP into Office 2010 will also make it harder for counterfeiters to defraud consumers by selling inferior, bogus copies of Office, as the product will have technical features that make the program harder to pirate.
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