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Privacy Social Networks Microsoft Your Rights Online

New Messenger Has Same Old, Gaping Privacy Holes 287

An anonymous reader writes "Microsoft released the beta of the new 'Wave 4' Windows Live Essentials last week. The new beta of Windows Live Messenger 2011, while plugging some privacy holes and shoring up the user interface, fails to tackle the one biggest privacy-buster of all. Say you use Messenger to IM your wife. You also use Messenger to IM your old girlfriend. The next time your wife logs on to her Hotmail account — not Messenger, Hotmail — she will see that you and your old girlfriend 'are now friends.' It all happens without your knowledge or permission, and it happens even if you tell Messenger you want your personal information to be 'Private.'"
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New Messenger Has Same Old, Gaping Privacy Holes

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  • Re:Err what? (Score:2, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 28, 2010 @08:19PM (#32724832)

    You can untag yourself in a facebook photo, you can unfriend someone so they can't tag you, etc. With this, there are no options. Facebook isn't exactly the golden standard of user-controlled privacy settings, but it's better than this.

  • Re:Err what? (Score:4, Informative)

    by minsk ( 805035 ) on Monday June 28, 2010 @08:20PM (#32724840)

    I would LOVE for facebook to have a privacy option "Disable the ability to tag me in any photo"

    Like the privacy setting entitled "Photos and videos I'm tagged in", which can be customized to Only Me or blocked from specific people?

    I can't swear that it works properly. So test with someone other than your mistress first :)

  • by ShawnDoc ( 572959 ) on Monday June 28, 2010 @08:43PM (#32725050) Homepage
    Can't you turn this off in the Windows Live privacy settings (not the Live Messenger privacy settings)?
  • by westlake ( 615356 ) on Monday June 28, 2010 @08:58PM (#32725172)

    Microsoft Messenger? Oh you mean that thing i don't have installed on this computer? The thing i specifically removed from the silent install disc i made?

    Relevancy is best seen from the view outside the basement.

    Messenger has 330 million users and is available in 50 languages. Windows Live Messenger [wikipedia.org]

     

  • by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 28, 2010 @09:16PM (#32725298)
    actually this is a case of users proving that no matter what features you provide them they will still make stupid mistakes and blame it on the vendor, or in this case blog it to the internet.

    FYI,

    Log in to live
    Select your profile
    select privacy
    Adjust your privacy for contacts to whatever you like. friends can see non restricted contacts by default but you can disable that.

    lesson of the day, if your gonna cheat, then know the fuck what your doing.
  • by man_of_mr_e ( 217855 ) on Monday June 28, 2010 @10:42PM (#32725846)

    None that i'm aware of. Same with most VOIP services. Skype has encryption, but they also tap peoples calls at the drop of a supeona.. Which is not a good thing even if you're not doing anything wrong (there are lots of people in jails and prisons for things they didn't do based on evidence which "seems to fit")

  • by smeckert ( 713620 ) on Monday June 28, 2010 @10:46PM (#32725874) Journal

    Microsoft Phishes your accounts.

    I was showing my friend how to get a paypal account, and had him sign up,
    the whole time warning him about phishing emails.
    "Never click the paypal link in an email. Go there on the browser."

    He signed up using a hotmail.com address, and the "verify
    your account" email came back phished by microsoft passport.

    The email had an IP address in the href= for the link.
    The IP address resolved back to a passport.microsoft.com address block.

    They wanted him to sign in to paypal on their server, steal his login,
      and then pass the info along to paypal.

    Don't take my word, try it!
    They NEED bashing.

  • by bloodhawk ( 813939 ) on Tuesday June 29, 2010 @02:29AM (#32727164)
    If you mean private as in the 3 default options, then no it doesn't, you have to explicitly go into privacy and then advanced and edit the settings.

    PRivate is defined as : allowing friends to still have some access.

    go into privacy settings->advanced->Basic Information->friends list and set who can see your friends list to "JUST ME"

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