MicroSoft drops the hammer on it's e-mail consumers

[ventrical]

Here .. here .. is this now ... oy.. :)

" However, if we receive information indicating that a customer is using our services to traffic in intellectual or physical property that was stolen from Microsoft, we will not inspect that customer's private content ourselves, but we may refer the matter to law enforcement."

How can we steal 'things' from Microsoft (electronic media) that has already been portaled and broadcast in the past tense on the internet? This is a rhetorical question of course :)

[buzzingrobot]

Well, Microsoft doesn't "broadcast" Windows, Office, etc. You pay, sometimes, then you get access to a copy. Microsoft does not sell you the right to redistribute the thing willy-nilly. Therefore, you don't have that right. (Some people think they do, but that's just self-serving rationalization. People who make something are the source of rights to that "something".)

The same basic right to control how something you make is copied and distributed is the basis of both Microsoft's use of copyright and IP law *and* the use of the same laws to enforce the approach evangelized by RMS and the FSF. Copyright and IP law are currently faulty, but that does not negate the right they were created to protect.

[grahammechanical]

It is a bit of a cheek to use MS email service to set up deals to buy/sell MS office furniture that fell off the back of a lorry. :) "Physical property."

[ventrical]

Well.. it goes sort of like this scenario: I am a computer programmer in the security field. I have discovered a major security flaw in one of Microsofts' coniption-widgets ( for now , a coniption widget is a hypothetical network service append-a-gizzmo - just imagine). I attempt to disclose the security flaw to Microsofts' IT division. They reply and tell me that my assumption is impossible and can never happen. Still , as a proprietor with several customers who's security is at risk. I am bound to secure their systems from this flaw. So I debug the module and convert it into QBasic (which was essentially used to write the Windows XP OS). The QBasic code is a duplicate of an original algorithm written by Microsoft. I see the bug/flaw and fix it. To verify my assumption is correct and that the bug can be duplicated I need a secondary source to confirm and authenticate my assumption - so I sent the original block of code to a colleague using my Hotmail account.

So far , so good. Microsoft is claiming it will not pry into my e-mails but if my colleague (or other intercept) feels that the code I sent breaches Microsoft EULA/MSA or crosses the lines of Intellectual Property Rights then that colleague can basically report me to Microsoft and Microsoft in turn can call the authorities to have THEM pry into my e-mails to confirm that some block of their code was transmitted using their hotmail e-mail service and that it breaches their new EULA .. etc..

So time goes on , I get charged and fined for breaching one of the gazzillion superfluosity agreements they have cajoled into the laws of the land and they go on to use the injected code bug-fix that I created when they release the next update to the flawed module and no credits are mentioned as to who developed the original bug-fix!!

So then people stop independently creating bugfixes or , I guess , use gmail instead :)

regards..

[mastablasta]

why are they even spying on email?

[ventrical]

why are they even spying on email?


Basically the new MSA encourages others to do the spying for them.

Here is the old and new MSAs.


http://windows.microsoft.com/en-ca/windows/microsoft-services-agreement

http://windows.microsoft.com/en-ca/windows/microsoft-services-agreement-faq (http://windows.microsoft.com/en-ca/windows/microsoft-services-agreement)

[ventrical]

screenshot .. go figure..

[grahammechanical]

They may have an arrangement with a certain government agency that does collect people's emails, that if the agency, in the normal course of its legitimate activities you understand, does find anything in those emails regarding the theft of MS property, that the said agency inform Microsoft.

Or, may be they have an arrangement with that Snowden fellow. He has a nice collection of emails, Does he not? He has got to get his money from somewhere.

[ventrical]

That's cutting very close to the chase. After 9/11/2001 a lot of things changed here in North America (and world wide) when it came to e-mail transmissions. The U.S. feds basically had carte' blanche to use Federal Trojans to spy on whomever they pleased. I was part of a research security project and was able to find that any individual could use any means available to protect their personal computing system. One of those ways was to install one of the flavours of Ubuntu (at that time Ubuntu was pretty well impervious to Federal Trojans) but the general masses just didn't like the Linux alternatives and they and they just wanted their XP to work.

What I think it is all coming down to is that Microsoft will eventually start requiring that there customers pay for e-mails services.

On the topic at hand .. it will be very hard to police the millions of e-mails that are transmitted each day but it would be easy for a mix&match type google-bot to parse through the voluminous data flagging suspect phrases .. etc..


..so .. it goes back to a critical point I made once before, sometime ago .. about a player piano. Are you playing the piano or is the piano playing you? err or was that Kurt Vonnegut Jr. :)

regards..

[buzzingrobot]

Email is not transmitted. "Transmissions" is a term applied to broadcasting or point-to-point communications. Email is neither. Like everything else on the web, it is published. An email is a plain-text file that is stored on a publicly accessible server. The only "privacy" afforded email is authentication: Username and password. The purpose of *that* is as much to direct software to the correct mail file as it is to keep other users of a mail service from nosing around in each other's mail.

In other words, it's tantamount to a sign that says, "Please don't look here."

No "Trojans' are needed to collect header info from email (the primary aim for agencies looking to determine associations between targeted individuals). These data are available to anyone with the right access. Anyone with the resources to acquire that access, government or not, could do the same. E.g., any ISP -- or any entity operating a mail server used by others -- could collect and analyze all the header info on all email transiting its servers, and I imagine they do for business purposes.

The operating system used by an individual to create and send email essentially plays no role in creating or preserving the user's privacy. The structure and format of any email, from any client on any OS, adheres to the same Internet protocols. Arguing that Ubuntu is immune to imaginary "Federal Trojans" is misinformation.

Nothing wrong with Microsoft or anyone else charging for email service. I've used paid email providers for years because they have been consistently better than the free services. It's foolish and naive to expect email to be free to all comers, as if corporations had an obligation to give it away. (And hypocritical to demand gratis mail and then attack efforts to monetize it.)

[ventrical]

Before it is published it is first "sent" secondly, "recieved" . The publishing process after the fact is totally beside the point.



Nothing wrong with Microsoft or anyone else charging for email service. I've used paid email providers for years because they have been consistently better than the free services. It's foolish and naive to expect email to be free to all comers, as if corporations had an obligation to give it away. (And hypocritical to demand gratis mail and then attack efforts to monetize it.)


.. and it's your money if you want to give it a way , but don't call others foolish for expecting corporations to adhere to there original agreements.



Arguing that Ubuntu is immune to imaginary "Federal Trojans" is misinformation.




I don't know where you get your disinformation from. Can you refer to a link that states that Federal trojans are "imaginary"?

http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2011-10/12/german-state-spying-software

[grahammechanical]

On the topic at hand .. it will be very hard to police the millions of e-mails that are transmitted each day but it would be easy for a mix&match type google-bot to parse through the voluminous data flagging suspect phrases .. etc..

True and it means that the trawl net has to scoop up every fish in order to select the few poisonous ones. Since 2000 the UK has had the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000 or RIPA.

http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2000/23/contents

Look at Chapter 1 Interception, Section 4 Power to Provide for Lawful interception. How do they intercept the communications of people outside the UK without collecting all the communications passing through the Internet nodes in this country? And the politicians are surprised when it is their communications that get caught in the trawl net.

Regards.

[buzzingrobot]

Before it is published it is first "sent" secondly, "recieved" . The publishing process after the fact is totally beside the point.



.. and it's your money if you want to give it a way , but don't call others foolish for expecting corporations to adhere to there original agreements.




I don't know where you get your disinformation from. Can you refer to a link that states that Federal trojans are "imaginary"?

http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2011-10/12/german-state-spying-software

Email is not point-to-point communication. It's the creation of plain-text files that reside on servers until someone comes along to access that file. Wordplay sophistry won't change the reality of what happens.

The recent Snowden-inspired flap did not involve "trojans" installed on individual PC's.

The net was not, and is not, built to ensure privacy. Whatever privacy we have on the net depends on laws, their enforcement, and lack of a reason for other people to read what we put there.

We have no more right to expect privacy on the net than we would if it were a giant public bulletin board on which we posted handwritten notes. If you really don't want to risk someone seeing something, keep it off the net.

Free email: Slower, less reliable, uses me as a product. (Rather contradictory to complain about email privacy and then let free providers mine your email for targetted ads and other monetizing ventures). You'll need to show me a Terms of Service containing a binding promise to maintain that particular free email service in perpetuity. What any of us expect corporations to do is pretty pointless.

[ventrical]

Email is not point-to-point communication. It's the creation of plain-text files that reside on servers until someone comes along to access that file. Wordplay sophistry won't change the reality of what happens.

The recent Snowden-inspired flap did not involve "trojans" installed on individual PC's.

The net was not, and is not, built to ensure privacy. Whatever privacy we have on the net depends on laws, their enforcement, and lack of a reason for other people to read what we put there.

We have no more right to expect privacy on the net than we would if it were a giant public bulletin board on which we posted handwritten notes. If you really don't want to risk someone seeing something, keep it off the net.

Free email: Slower, less reliable, uses me as a product. (Rather contradictory to complain about email privacy and then let free providers mine your email for targetted ads and other monetizing ventures). You'll need to show me a Terms of Service containing a binding promise to maintain that particular free email service in perpetuity. What any of us expect corporations to do is pretty pointless.

I'm still waiting for a link from you pointing me to where it describes "Federal Trojans" as imaginary.

Regards..

[ventrical]

True and it means that the trawl net has to scoop up every fish in order to select the few poisonous ones. Since 2000 the UK has had the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000 or RIPA.

http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2000/23/contents

Look at Chapter 1 Interception, Section 4 Power to Provide for Lawful interception. How do they intercept the communications of people outside the UK without collecting all the communications passing through the Internet nodes in this country? And the politicians are surprised when it is their communications that get caught in the trawl net.

Regards.

Ahhh .. grahammechanical!.. the master researcher .. :) Thank you for making my case for me on several fronts.



Unlawful and authorised interception
1 Unlawful interception.

(1)It shall be an offence for a person intentionally and without lawful authority to intercept, at any place in the United Kingdom, any communication in the course of its *transmission* by means of—




edit; and of course that led to the Sprint / AT&T fiasco for surreptitiously complying.

[ventrical]

The only link I found with the terms 'imaginary federal trojans' points only to this thread. There is a 'federal trojan fake' which is actually a real malware .. but that's all I could find.

Anyways ... being a long time hotmail subscriber, I was taken aback at the popup notification with the new MSA terms included when I logged on to my account yesterday and thought it may be a good topic of discussion .. maybe even a heads up to migrate to an e-mail service elsewhere.

Regards...

[buzzingrobot]

I'm still waiting for a link from you pointing me to where it describes "Federal Trojans" as imaginary.

Regards..

You lifted a phrase -- from a 2011 report about reported actvities of a German state government that you then specifically applied without substantiation to the U.S. federal government -- which you did not cite until a subsequent post. I don't need to play gotcha when substantive issues aren't addressed.

[ventrical]

You lifted a phrase -- from a 2011 report about reported actvities of a German state government that you then specifically applied without substantiation to the U.S. federal government -- which you did not cite until a subsequent post. I don't need to play gotcha when substantive issues aren't addressed.

But you have substantiated nothing, only opinions without documentation, and I had requested that prior to the above slant which is beyond the scope of the topic of this particular thread. E-mails are -sent- (transmitted) then recieved and subsequently published. It's basic A,B,Cs here. If you have documentation proving otherwise then please post the links.
Thank you.

Regards..

[bashiergui]

So then people stop independently creating bugfixes or , I guess , use gmail instead Seeing as how you're already good and agitated, I see an opportunity to poke the bear by disagreeing :)

I see your point in this post, but in reality Microsoft has a pretty kickass bug bounty program.
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dn425036.aspx

Surely we can all agree that you can torrent "free" (i.e. Pirated) versions of Windows rather easily. People try to reverse MS software for illegal purposes, other than bug hunting. I don't have a problem with Microsoft saying if they suspect you're doing this they will turn you in for prosecution. It's more transparency than there was previously. We know they've always done it, now they're just telling us they'll do it.

Like others said, it's a free email service. What kind of privacy is reasonable to expect when using it? (Hint: if the answer isn't NONE then you're delusional.)

/ButtonPushing ;)

[ventrical]

Nope ... :) lol Not mad, angry or agitated. :)

Please see original thread.

http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=2243865&p=13120010#post13120010

Basically , I own Microsoft , so , how can I steal something I own :) lol

Regards..

[speedwell68]

Don't use Microsoft products, end of problem.

[CantankRus]

Nope ... :) lol Not mad, angry or agitated. :)

Please see original thread.

http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=2243865&p=13120010#post13120010

Basically , I own Microsoft , so , how can I steal something I own :) lol

Regards..
Not according to the EULA....

SCOPE OF LICENSE. The software is licensed, not sold.

[ventrical]

Not according to the EULA....



I am a coin collector and also a collector of other items such as vintage hardware and software. The Microsoft Original shrink wrapped Windows 95 OEM kit with it's mint intaglio Certificate of Authenticity has numismatic value, especially coming up to it's 20th year birthday.

The "For distribution only with a new PC" was the template for what we know today as adware and scareware. The pristeen packages you see in my video will eventually be put up for auction. They are like little time capsules if you will :) and new collectors and experimenters may pay an appreciated nostalgic price to obtain them. Now , as pertinent to the topic of this thread, if I use my e-mail to negotiate a sale am I "trafficing" in Microsoft products according to the new MSA ? :) lol

As I asked just previously, how can I steal something I own?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PfzxpvwpZhM&feature=youtu.be

[CantankRus]

You uploaded a vid to youtube just for this thread?
Nice work, I lolled at the voice over. :p
Did you buy them all at once or just accumulate over time?

[ventrical]

You uploaded a vid to youtube just for this thread?
Nice work, I lolled at the voice over. :p
Did you buy them all at once or just accumulate over time?


ComSci 101

Declare your assumptions, document your work ! :)

They were a one lump find. No voice over. That was my Nokia :)

[grahammechanical]

As I asked just previously, how can I steal something I own?

Who said that you could own Microsoft products that you have paid good money for? :)

[ventrical]

My wallet ! :)

[CantankRus]

My wallet ! :)
My wallet doesn't speak anymore because he feels empty inside. :(

[ventrical]

If there is a licence in there with your name on it then you can claim ownership. :) Same with a licence from MS. If you claim it , you own it.

:)