[gabeh]

I got a death threat while working at Microsoft around 2003. Someone managed to hit the lottery on our phone tree and find me, a lowly software development engineer on Windows CE. This person was _very_ angry and was trying to open a PDF on their new Dell computer. I let them know they needed a PDF reader and I recommended Adobe's product. The person was now confused on top of angry and I was running out of patience after about 15 minutes in a circular discussion. I tried to wrap up the conversation by telling him to try support and gave him that phone number. He snapped and told me he was going to come hunt me and my family down and kill us. I hung up the phone at that point. I really didn't take him seriously, I hadn't given him any identifiable info other than I was an engineer on CE and he just sounded like a very angry person.

I called security and let them know what happened anyway. My office was invaded in about 15 minutes by 3 security folks and a Microsoft investigator. The best part was how big my coworkers eyes would get when they walked by my office and saw me surrounded by security being questioned. That afternoon the investigator followed up and asked if I was still doing ok and let me know the person was calling in from I think Kansas or some other place half way across the country. I told him I didn't feel like it was really a credible threat and that was the last I heard about the whole thing from security.