Latest Reason To Quit Hotmail: Microsoft says it snooped on Hotmail to track leak

U.S. Authorities arrest Alex Kibkalo, ex-Microsoft employee. The indictment states, Kibkalo "uploaded proprietary software and pre-release software updates for Windows 8 RT as well as the Microsoft Activation Server Software Development Kit (SDK) to his personal SkyDrive account in August 2012."

Kibkalo not only leaked the secret screenshots of Windows 8, but also provided the information about 'activation of Windows' that helped the crackers to create a keygen for Windows 8 to bypass the authentication.

SNOOPING OWN CUSTOMERS

But spying on the private inbox of a user without a court order is highly unusual and raises questions. That means, not just Intelligence agencies like the NSA, or GCHQ, but the companies themselves could snoop on their customers whenever they want to. Instead of taking their evidence to law enforcement, they decided to search through the blogger’s private messages themselves.

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Google, Facebook, and Microsoft publish their transparency reports that explain how often respond to government requests for user data, but these reports don’t say how often the companies are doing this on their own.

Just today, Microsoft announced to make a change to its privacy policy to add more transparency to such requests.

In a statement, John E. Frank, a Microsoft vice president and deputy general counsel, said “The privacy of our customers is incredibly important to us, and while we believe our actions in this particular case were appropriate given the specific circumstances, we want to be clear about how we will handle similar situations going forward,”

According to new Policy, it would require its legal team to get the court orders before accessing users' private data and would submit the evidence to law enforcement agencies for further actions. Microsoft will also publish a bi-annual transparency report to list all such kind of cases.