Slashdot Mirror
Krebs on Microsoft Suspending "Patch Tuesday" Emails and Blaming Canada
tsu doh nimh writes In a move that may wind up helping spammers, Microsoft is blaming a new Canadian anti-spam law for the company's recent decision to stop sending regular emails about security updates for its Windows operating system and other Microsoft software. Some anti-spam experts who worked very closely on Canada's Anti-Spam Law (CASL) say they are baffled by Microsoft's response to a law which has been almost a decade in the making. Indeed, an exception in the law says it does not apply to commercial electronic messages that solely provide "warranty information, product recall information or safety or security information about a product, goods or a service that the person to whom the message is sent uses, has used or has purchased." Several people have observed that Microsoft likely is using the law as a convenient excuse for dumping an expensive delivery channel.
Is there no reason they couldn't just use Twitter?
Using RSS instead of Twitter allows Microsoft not to rely on the single point of failure that is Twitter Inc.
And besides, isn't this solved by Windows Update?
For one thing, having thousands of PCs in a company individually download multi-megabytes updates from Windows Update wastes the bandwidth compared to use of WSUS. For another, some administrators prefer to test Windows patches before deploying them because Windows patches some are known to break programs that inadvertently rely on underspecified behavior.
The Canada Anti Spam Law requires very specific opt in from the people recieving emails. It requires that certian content not be in the email. It has fines. Microsoft is going to have to train its people and change its templates. It is going to have to get its emails approved by Canadian lawyers. It will take time for it to get in complience of the law. But the deadline is tommorow. So they will RSS feeds instead. It is very easy for an expert to say the emails are exsempt to the press. But I bet if you showed them a few emails they would find a few problems. Things Microsoft needs to fix or get fined.