From: Jon Biddell [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]
>I just received this from Micro$oft... Notice the "From" field.
>
>---------- Forwarded Message ----------
>Subject: Microsoft Direct Access Newsletter
>Date: Mon, 14 Aug 2000 00:35:23 -0700
>From: "Microsoft"
><[EMAIL PROTECTED]
>rosoft.com>
>
>
>Microsoft Direct Access Newsletter
>
><marketing crap deleted>
>
>Now, it may just be my finely developed sense of paranoia, but the
>"From" address looks suspiciously like an Office 2000 "registration
>code" - my wiffe received the same newsletter and it had a different
>"from" string.
>
>Neither of our two copies (now sold, thank God) were ever registered
>with The Evil One, so one must ask what embedded codes are in their
>documents....:-)
It's a UUID (Universally Unique Identifier) - basically a 128 bit number
which is built up using the DCE standard and guaranteed unique across the
world. This is used in Windows to identifiy pretty much everything used in
COM/DCOM on which most office applications depend fairly heavily. Exchange
server also marks all email with one of these for tracking purposes, in fact
there will probably be one in the header of this email.
I don't know what the 0_3998 bit is - that's extra to the standard.
What wouldn't surprise me is that they are using it for 'bad address'
detection so any non-delivery receipts will automatically get taken off the
list.
They got into a lot of hot water a few years ago with Windows Update where
they were getting UUIDs from people's machines which contained the ethernet
MAC address as part of the ID (as per the DCE standard to ensure uniqueness)
and claims were made that they were building a database of people's machine
types and what software they had installed. I'm not going to comment on
what there motives may have been, but I've a philosophy that goes something
like "never attribute to malice what can adequately be explained by
incompetence".
Not sure if this explained anything. Just some useless information.
John Wiltshire
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