{"id":29393,"date":"2006-10-13T10:00:05","date_gmt":"2006-10-13T10:00:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.msdn.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/2006\/10\/13\/why-do-i-see-the-same-fake-names-in-microsoft-samples-over-and-over\/"},"modified":"2020-12-23T11:28:46","modified_gmt":"2020-12-23T19:28:46","slug":"20061013-00","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/20061013-05\/?p=29393","title":{"rendered":"Why do I see the same fake names in Microsoft samples over and over?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>If you see a fake name in a Microsoft sample web site, sample code, or sample documentation, you&#8217;ll probably find that it&#8217;s usually one from a small set of names. A sample corporation is typically called <a href=\"http:\/\/www.contoso.com\/\">Contoso<\/a> or <a href=\"http:\/\/www.fabrikam.com\/\">Fabrikam<\/a>. A sample store is typically <a href=\"http:\/\/www.wingtiptoys.com\/\"> Wingtip Toys<\/a>. (For a few weeks, they used Wingtip Toys on <a href=\"http:\/\/local.live.com\/\"> Windows Live Local<\/a>.) A sample bank is <a href=\"http:\/\/www.woodgrovebank.com\/\"> Woodgrove Bank<\/a>. And a sample software company is <a href=\"http:\/\/www.litwareinc.com\/\"> Litware, Inc<\/a>. (There are other fake names, but these are the ones you&#8217;re most likely to see.)<\/p>\n<p>Where did these fake names come from?<\/p>\n<p>The Trademark Group in Microsoft&#8217;s legal department.<\/p>\n<p>The Trademark Group performed background checks on these names and cleared them for use as fictitious entities by Microsoft samples and documentation. The web sites for all of these &#8220;companies&#8221; redirect to the main <a href=\"http:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/\">Microsoft home page<\/a>. Having a pool of &#8220;standard fake names&#8221; means that Microsoft samples and documentation don&#8217;t run into the problem of <a href=\"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/20040713-00\/?p=38463\"> a fake URL turning into a porn site<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>There is a stock collection of fake names.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1069,"featured_media":111744,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[26],"class_list":["post-29393","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-oldnewthing","tag-other"],"acf":[],"blog_post_summary":"<p>There is a stock collection of fake names.<\/p>\n","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29393","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1069"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=29393"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29393\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/111744"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=29393"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=29393"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=29393"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}