After twitter, Microsoft to inform you if you are being spied on by the government

Microsoft-Azure-Government

Few days ago we reported that twitter is informing the people if their accounts are bring fondled by the BIG MAN. Following the same footsteps, Microsoft has made a promise to the user to notify them if their accounts are being targeted by the Government backed hackers.

The users of Outlook and Onedrive are the ones promised to get the notification. One authorized access by an unauthorized(however governmental) user and Microsoft will tattle about it to the user. This move may be mainly due to what’s in the next paragraph

Ex-Employee says there was no notification when China spied on Tibetan leaders.

Several years ago, China hacked into several Hotmail accounts of Internation Tibetan Leaders and Uighur minorities. But the company never notified the victims, instead, Microsoft told them to change their passwords without revealing the reason behind the request to do so.

But all is about to change, the company now has said that if there is strong suspicion of your account under hijack or hackers backed by the authority, you oughta be warned by email.

Scott Charney writes

“We’re taking this additional step of specifically letting you know if we have evidence that the attacker may be ‘state-sponsored’ because it is likely that the attack could be more sophisticated or more sustained than attacks from cyber criminals and others. These notifications do not mean that Microsoft’s own systems have in any way been compromised.”

Yahoo promised the same thing last week. Dunno if someone still uses Yahoo, though. But since then, Twitter, facebook and many more have come forward to notify its users as to when they are being hacked by the government.

Government gets crusty by the decision

Though the news is well and good in order to protect the privacy of the tech users, the UK government has started to tantrum. Their unhappiness roots from the fact that the data helps in fighting the terrorists.

The new Investigatory Powers Bill pushed by the UK government will take on the bosses of all these tech firms if they warn the users regarding the spying done by GCHQ and MI6.

Two years prison is the cost of warning the user that they are being spied on.

 

 

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