Computerworld blogger Preston Galla reports on Microsoft's (apparently) soon to be abandoned effort to
prevent its 'Global Criminal Compliance Handbook' from landing in the public domain. It gives the skinny on what data Microsoft is required to give to police about people using its online services - Hotmail, search, IM, etc - and the process required for them to get it.
Read his full post, with
links to additional stories and a link where you can download the
handbook here.
The net/net - they get access to just about everything - email, chat strings, logs of when people logged on, for how long, and more. Basically, they get full access into the good, bad, ugly and boring.
Talk about the power of an audit trail...
I am guessing that it is possible for a
corporate mail server to log a users Gmail or Hotmail activity if enabled to do
so (Yes?? No?? If someone knows can they please comment on it?)
Even if that's not possible, those emails are
still being stored on corporate servers - Microsoft's. If they aren't
being mined to figure out how to make you spend more time and money with
Microsoft, we now know how cops - and fraudsters - can access your personal
accounts and all the secrets that lie within them. If there were a
special heaven for voyeurs, this handbook would be in the reception area.
I don't know about you, but I’m permanently deleting
everything in my webmail folders. I am guessing if the need arose it
could be restored, but I'm sure not going to make it easy for anyone to snoop
through my (not so) personal communications. Am I being smart? Paranoid? Both?

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