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Microsoft’s pants on fire

Microsoft’s pants on fire

As the Olympics opened, Microsoft was not letting people choose usernames with the word ‘Tibet’ in them when signing up for its online services, apparently so as to not offend China, where Microsoft does a lot of business.

Trying to select such a name returned an error message: originally, ‘Your requested username contains a word or phrase that is not allowed’,  but changed to it ‘Your requested username is not
available’ when blogs ran hot with criticism of the big M company.

The bloggers were reacting to a Microsoft spokeswoman who proferred an ingenious explanation:  she said the company blocked usernames that included the names of various financial institutions, to make it harder for to impersonate a bank by using an official-looking email address to steal customers’ passwords. Microsoft was blocking usernames containing "tib," apparently to protect customers of TIB Bank in Florida, the spokeswoman said.

A blogger named Rachel probably summed it up best: "Not only is the Microsoft spokeswoman’s nose getting really long, her pants are on fire."

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