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Comment by s1mplicissimus | Hacker News Reader

Most people I know can't afford to leak business insider information to 3rd party SaaS providers, so it's unfortunately not really an option.

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But… they do all the time. Almost everybody uses some mix of Office, Slack, Notion, random email providers, random “security” solutions etc. The exception is the opposite. The only thing prevents info leaking is ToS, and there are options for that even with LLMs. Nothing changed regarding that.

In my personal experience, it's very common for big companies to host email, messengers, conferencing software on their own servers.

Yes, then they use Outlook for example. Have you checked the ToS of the new Outlook version for commoners? They flat out state that they can use all of your emails for whatever they want.

Also, companies host for example an Exchange server on prem; and guess, what it connects to? Why you can usually access account at outlook.com?

Your on premise exchange server has zero connections to outlook.com. OWA (Outlook Web Access) looks similar to outlook.com but has otherwise nothing to do with it.

Then let’s call outlook.office.com, and that’s an OWA, and you’re redirected there if you login on outlook.com. And that’s the exception when on prem Exchange servers really work as more than mere proxies nowadays. I’m quite sure that there are still real fully on prem solutions, but it’s laughable these opinions, that most company really care about this. They simply don’t.

In my experience it’s very common for big companies to not host. Think Fortune 500 type companies. Most are legally happy with their MSA and reasonably confident in security standards.

> In my personal experience, it's very common for big companies to host email, messengers, conferencing software on their own servers.

Mind sharing a clarification on your understanding of "common" and "big"?

All of those things are hosted on-prem in the bigger orgs I have worked in.

I don't think Slack or Notion have on-prem/self-hosted options.

This is a poor take imo. Depends on the industry but the worlds businesses run on the shoulders of companies like Microsoft and heavily use OneDrive/Sharepoint. Most entities, even those with sensitive information are legally comfortable with that arrangement. Using a LLM does not change much so long as the MSA is similar.

> Depends on the industry but the worlds businesses run on the shoulders of companies like Microsoft and heavily use OneDrive/Sharepoint

I am sure MS employees need to tell themselves that to sleep well. The statement itself doesn't seem to hold much epistemological value above that though.

It goes in direct conflict with your idea. I am sure you know some people within your circle that say they cannot leak data but the fact remains. Over 85% of Fortune 500 companies use some combo of OneDrive or Sharepoint. The companies have already gotten familiar with the risks and legally are comfortable with the MSAs. So I am not sure what legs you are standing on.

Absolutely there are specific companies or industries where they think the risk is too great but for many, outsourcing the process is either the same or less risk then doing it all inhouse.

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