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Comment by eik3_de | Hacker News Reader

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eik3_de

> From the company's point of view, desperate times call for desperate measures.

So they're saying "the end justifies the means".

I'm saying: no, stop and don't.

Stop using any Microsoft services (don't forget skype) and better yet any of their products.

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And use what alternative? Google, Apple, Facebook? Ubuntu cloud? Really? Is our data more save at Ubuntu services? You seem to be under the wrong impression that it's a problem we can solve by avoiding products of one company. As long as we're dealing with companies we're dealing with issues like that regardless of the image these companies try to create.

Use the internet as it was a public place. Remeber you can't even trust ssl connections (see Apple by mistake, NSA by purpose).

No they're actually saying "by using Hotmail the client agreed with these terms of service that in exceptional circumstances yadayadayada and we did what we were allowed to in this case".

So they shouldn't simply stop doing this (we don't really know how many times they did of course), they should start by getting rid of terms of service allowing such constructs - cause technically, they didn't do anything wrong and their defense seems justified (ianal)

I suppose it hinges on how intertwined you feel morality is with the law, and I don't mean to be insulting with this observation because it's a legitimate difference of opinion.

But "Just because you can doesn't mean you should" is another perspective some folks take on matters like this.

Which, btw, isn't this what Gmail has done since it's inception? I remember reading it plainly stated in the 1st paragraph of their EULA when it was beginning the long beta run, I appreciated their candor & also opted not* to use such a service. I assumed all free emails hid the same clause in varying depth inside their EULAs. Did we learn nothing from Excite@Home?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Excite.com#Excite.40Home

EDIT: *I had hotmail & excite accounts before the mergers and I retained them for years after for online catch-all accounts. My 17yo hotmail locked me out when I refused to give MS my phone number awhile back. meh.

Agree entirely. In fact we need to stop using proprietary software full stop and stop using SaaS and hosted platforms to save cost and shift liability. They're all the same turd rolled in different coloured glitter.

The current company I'm working for are a little pissed off with this whole Microsoft reading their email thing and have started to plan moving their exchange installation on-site from Office 365.

Microsoft still win due to lock in...

Right, MS still wins. But for how long? American companies looking at difficult times due all this issues. Why should German or French companies rely on MS or Apple or Intel products when they have to face industrial spying. I don't even want to know the extent of the advantage american companies have gained due to NSA and othera spying.

… because American software is usually very competitive – going national usually results in using sub-par software at higher prices. And your clients usually will not pay for these increased costs – and your competition will mostly still use the best software available, i.e., usually American software.

Hm, American software, that's a rather vague definition.

I agree – maybe I should have written from American developers.

Juxtapose Microsoft with Google, GitHib Facebook. What do you learn?

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