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

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.

According to Arrington, Google reads it too

[mTor]

Here's what Michael Arrington, former editor of TechCrunch, says:

I have first hand knowledge of this. A few years ago, Iâ(TM)m nearly certain that Google accessed my Gmail account after I broke a major story about Google.

A couple of weeks after the story broke my source, a Google employee, approached me at a party in person in a very inebriated state and said that they (Iâ(TM)m being gender neutral here) had been asked by Google if they were the source. The source denied it, but was then shown an email that proved that they were the source.

The source had corresponded with me from a non Google email account, so the only way Google saw it was by accessing my Gmail account.

A little while after that my source was no longer employed by Google.

ABOUT THAT TIME GOOGLE SPIED ON MY GMAIL [uncrunched.com]

Personal criminal liability applies

[gweihir]

I suspect that certain MS managers and system administrators should now refrain from traveling to the EU for the next few years. Under EU law, you may not even look at email of your employees without having gotten a signed waiver on paper or a court order.