Microsoft offers: Why? and is there a downside?

garlin said:

Strange footnote: I know several smart, technical people who are really into MSN/Live/Bing Rewards.

They know it's a stupid marketing campaign, but it's about the hacking of simple-minded offers. They're the same people who go on for hours on how to stack credit card or airline mileage programs. What's worse is they work for MS...

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lol that’s a bit harsh

TraderGary said:

Microsoft purchased DuckDuckGo in 2019 for $100 million.

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Yes, but Microsoft hasn’t compromised DuckDuck… yet.

this is a hilarious thread.

If you question a link, you can mouse over it and you will usually get a line of info at the bottom of the window with the actual place it is linking to.

My email is a gmail addy so most spam gets caught by gmail. Not all - I have to be alert.

Something for free? Not in this world. If I click on spam, my addy is sold to 1000 other spammers. I am careful so I get very little. No offers of 2 mil LOL.

I use google search because none of the others give me what I am searching for. However, I use FF extension uBlock Origin so I don't see any ads. I also shut off the AI summary that you get at the top of the page.

I don't use Bing except for wallpaper, and I remove Edge.

I think I have facebook going to Outlook, nothing else, but I don't get any spam there. I use TBird.

"all search engines are suspect" - I don't have any prob w the way I use google, but I am careful.

Prize? sucker. Free? they just sold your email addy! LOL

MS is in the business of making money. Nothing else. They may come up with a windows release occasionally but that is just part of the game to suck you in to 365 , Bing, etc etc. They do not do it to do you a favor. Nope.

krism said:

this is a hilarious thread

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I’ll tell you what's hilarious…

{deleted}

The folks making DuckDuckGo did not have the mental acuity to come up with a better name. How could they possibly help me? How about scramble scramble eggs - now THAT I would go for!!! <sarcasm!>

MS didn't sell your email, they found you because you have a MS Account. It's an offer to use more MS services.
Apple & Google spam you to use their services, too.

DUH.

garlin said:

MS didn't sell your email, they found you because you have a MS Account. It's an offer to use more MS services.
Apple & Google spam you to use their services, too.

DUH.

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I have several MS accounts - all with legit email - skype and passport. I do not get any MS spam at all. Zero. and I do occasionally log on to MS community to ask a question.

I get no spam from google though I use google search all the time and have Chrome running (though rarely, just used it yesterday) on my build.(no, I do NOT let it sync to my google account)(I just use it to test sites that are problematic on FF (because I have a wrong setting) )

maybe hippohippobump?