Thursday, June 19, 2014

Microsoft's new Terms of Service: what changed

The company has an executive summary for users; most of the changes are consolidation and more explicit statements about not using, for example, email content for ad targeting (something the company has ripped Google apart for doing).
One change was prompted by a recent wave of bad publicity over Microsoft's actions, according to the Seattle Times:
     In addition, the company’s updated Windows Services Privacy Statement, which covers Microsoft account, Outlook.com and OneDrive, now states that in cases where the company suspects that someone is using its services to traffic in stolen Microsoft intellectual or physical property, it will not inspect the customer’s private content, but may instead refer the matter to law enforcement.
     That was in response to an incident earlier this year in which a former Microsoft employee was charged by federal prosecutors with stealing Microsoft trade secrets and giving that information to a tech blogger. (That former employee, Alex Kibkalo, plead guilty and was sentenced to three months in prison.)
     Microsoft received a lot of criticism for finding out about Kibkalo by looking at the Hotmail.com account of the blogger. The company had said, in response to the criticism, that its own terms of service allowed it to carry out such an examination under “exceptional circumstances.” But later, Microsoft said that, in such circumstances in the future, it would call in law enforcement to inspect a customer’s content, rather than doing so itself.

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