TMG Customer ID for Reputation Services

In a previous blog entry, we announced the availability of the Microsoft Reputation Services Feedback and Error Reporting Portal (beta). The portal’s purpose is to allow anyone the ability to provide feedback to Microsoft on URL classifications. When a block page is presented to the end user, Forefront TMG includes a link offering the opportunity to report the URL to Microsoft as misclassified. Users who click the link will be directed to the MRS Feedback and Error Reporting portal.

Customers may also manually select to report a URL to Microsoft Reputation Services as incorrectly categorized. To submit this URL to the MRS, TMG constructs a parameterized query string which includes a ‘CustomerID’, as shown below to identify the submission as originating from the Forefront Threat Management Gateway 2010 product.

The ‘CustomerID’ is a hard-coded value that is specific to the TMG 2010 product and is the identical for all installations and all customers. It is not and cannot be used to uniquely identify a specific installation, customer or usage. This parameter is only used to inform MRS servers that the request originates from a Forefront TMG product. The data provided from Forefront TMG is important telemetry to improve the MRS service and hence has a specific mechanism to identify the TMG product usage. To learn more about the Forefront TMG privacy, we encourage you to read the TMG privacy statement.

Author: Dotan Elharrar, Program Manager, Microsoft Forefront TMG

Reviewers: David Cross, Brita Jenquin, Joel Sider, Nathan Bigman