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They're Reading Your Mail: Microsoft's ToS, Windows 8 Leak, and Snooping

Posted by timothy on from the learned-it-from-watching-the-nsa dept.

After the recent Windows 8 leak by recently arrrested then-Microsoft employee Alex Kibkalo, Microsoft has tweaked its privacy policies, but also defended reading the email of the French blogger to whom Kibkalo sent the software. "The blogger in question, who remains unidentified, happened to use Hotmail—the investigation began in 2012 before Hotmail's Outlook.com transition—as his primary email account. So as part of its investigation, Microsoft peeked into the blogger's email account to read that person's correspondence with Kibkalo. ... Microsoft says it was justified in searching the blogger's email account, because it had probable cause to believe Kibkalo was funneling trade secrets to the blogger.The company also pointed out that even with its justification for searching the account, it would have been impossible to gain a court order." "The legal system wouldn't have let us" seems a strange argument to defend any act of snooping.

7 of 206 comments (clear)

  1. Don't store unencrypted email online by gwstuff · · Score: 4, Insightful

    While this story is crazy, and MS should be spitballed for it... I don't buy that other companies that let your store your data online don't give access to your data to their employee, if only for "debugging and administrative purposes." If you want to store your data online encrypt it.

  2. Scroogled by Microsoft! by hsmith · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Here is to Microsofts shit ad campaign "Scroogled" - first they snoop on all Skype communication and now they admit to reading emails LOOKING for things.

    I fully expect the daft ad men at Microsoft to continue their pathetic ad campaign.

    Glass houses and all that.

  3. Re: Bad summary by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    That is not a universal law. In Europe your landlord can not enter the flat without the tenants permission. It is expressly forbidden.

  4. Re: Bad summary by sribe · · Score: 5, Insightful

    A landlord can go into your apartment without your permission also.

    Wrong. Except in cases of emergency, he needs your permission. Unlike what some people think, you do get a few rights when you pay for the use of the apartment...

  5. Re:They checked without a warrant by tgv · · Score: 3, Insightful

    > It's not a legal question at all. If you use the service you have accepted their terms and so have given them permission to do this.
    That *is* a legal question. If the EULA says: we own your first born, is that so just because you checked a box on a web site? Nope. There are laws governing the reading of email, and Microsoft has to obey those rules like everyone else.

  6. Remember kids... by mwvdlee · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Remember kids...
    Do not store incriminating evidence on the servers of the company you're trying to screw.

    --
    Slashdot social media options: AIM, ICQ, Yahoo, Jabber and Mobile Text. Why no MySpace?
  7. Re:According to Arrington, Google reads it too by stoploss · · Score: 3, Insightful

    All I'm hearing is that these bloggers are incompetent at protecting their sources.

    I mean, WTF? Who the hell would imagine it's safe to use a company's services when collecting insider information? I mean the data is on the company's servers, FFS. I bet real spies don't need to be told not to set up a dead drop inside, say, the Capitol rotunda or the FBI headquarters, either.

    Protip for any planning to publish dirt on Yahoo: don't use Yahoo mail to collect the information. Not that anyone still uses Yahoo mail anymore...