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Microsoft recently made headlines for working with law enforcement to track down the source of Windows software leaks… and a lot of that press focused on the fact that the company read the emails of a Hotmail user as part of the investigation.

Last week company officials defended the practice, saying they had enough information to warrant a court order… but that a court wouldn’t order Microsoft to release information from its own servers.

Plenty of people were unimpressed with that response and now Microsoft has announced a new policy: Instead of snooping on users of its free email services, the company will now refer the matter to law enforcement agencies.

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6 replies on “Lilbits (3-28-2014): Microsofts reconsiders stance on email snooping”

  1. If this was a rapist that was figured out because of the ability to snoop emails, everyone would be cheering. Also, if anyone’s interested in various email clients or software for protecting yourself, visit http://www.dailyfreeware.net I use them constantly myself.

    1. But a rapist would, and still can, be caught with the use of a court order.
      The issue here is that MS did the snooping without a court order.
      Also, stop peddling your cr4p. You cannot protect yourself from snooping unless you encrypt all of your e-mails (in which case you should link to GPG), or change provider. A new e-mail client won’t help.

  2. Microsoft policy: push customers away and charge them for the privilege

  3. Riiight.. first the discovery that Lumia handsets send back everything to Microsoft, not Nokia, servers, and now this.
    You know when you’ve been Swindowed.

  4. FU Microsoft. And if the cops come to my door looking for trouble, they’ll get more trouble than they can handle. F’ers. Oh, wait. I don’t use hotmail and I don’t plan to. Never mind.

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