Hi, I'm Ozzie, and I'm a Software Pirate

Let's play a little quiz game, shall we?

Question 1: You have just gotten an illegal copy of PowerPoint and need a serial number to complete the installation. You attempt to obtain this serial number by

Searching Google or other anonymous search engine
Asking a friend in person
E-mailing a friend
E-mailing a total stranger

Got your answer? Now, keeping in mind that e-mail is in no way private unless you encrypt it, would you really choose anything besides (A) or (B)?

I didn't think so.

But let's assume, just for the sake of argument, that you chose (D).

Question #2: Do you e-mail the total stranger asking for assistance pirating software from

An anonymous, free e-mail account that would be difficult or impossible to trace
Your normal ISP account, registered to you, with your name, fone number, address, etc. on the account
Work

Keeping this in mind, I present Ozzie Morales, winner of the Stupid Employee of the Month award at Union Bay, the clothing company. The original e-mail arrived in the middle of the day; I was out running errands until evening and didn't get back in time to catch him at work. Apparently he checks his work e-mail at home, though...

From omorales@unionbay.com Thu Sep 11 19:24:21 2003
Date: Thu, 11 Sep 2003 12:24:04 -0700
From: "Ozzie Morales" <omorales@unionbay.com>
To: <thepickle@binhost.com>
Subject: need a number

Content-Type: text/html
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit
Content-Description: HTML

Where can I get Power Point 9.0 serial numbers..
 
oz

Yes, I checked the headers to make sure it really did come from Union Bay. I see no need to reproduce that here, but trust me.

Anyway, it was formatted with HTML, as you can see, so I sent him my standard "turn off HTML so I can read your message" autoreply and got this back an hour later:

From DBZOZZ@aol.com Thu Sep 11 22:26:56 2003
Date: Thu, 11 Sep 2003 18:27:03 -0400
From: DBZOZZ@aol.com
To: thepickle@binhost.com
Subject: need registration number


Hey pickle
I wanted to know how can I get some resistration number or codes for power point 9.0 for the mac
Ozzie

At this point I was pretty sure he was up to no good, so I sent off copies of his original e-mail and this one (with full headers) to Union Bay, Microsoft, and AOL. And I replied with the following question:

To: DBZOZZ@aol.com
From: the pickle <thepickle@binhost.com>
Subject: Re: need registration number

Did it ever occur to you to ask Microsoft?

To which I got the following response. Note the second line, which I'm dedicating to Captain Obvious:

From DBZOZZ@aol.com Thu Sep 11 23:56:41 2003
Date: Thu, 11 Sep 2003 19:56:47 -0400
From: DBZOZZ@aol.com
To: thepickle@binhost.com
Subject: Re: need registration number


no i have not....
I did not buy the software....

Ozzie

Wow. That's all I have to say. Wow.