Microsoft to begin alerting users about suspected government snooping

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Summary	Microsoft to begin alerting users about suspected government snooping
Category	How a company is doing
Power Supply Industry News	" ... Microsoft will warn email and OneDrive users if it detects apparent attempts by governments to hack into their accounts. The rollout of the alert system on Wednesday follows reports Redmond had failed to warn Hotmail users targeted by Chinese hackers, according to former employees. Reuters reports Microsoft was hacked in 2011 but failed to notify affected users, partly to avoid antagonising China, the suspected culprit. Targeted users were instead advised to pick new passwords without any particular reason being supplied at the time. Google, Facebook, Twitter and Yahoo already offer similar government hacker alert systems to the one just introduced by Microsoft. Alerts are far from rare. Google, for example, reportedly tells tens of thousands of users every few months that they've been targeted by foreign spooks. Redmond's alerting system has raised issues about US data breach disclosure laws. "If China had stolen Hotmail users' passwords, Microsoft would have had to tell users," Christopher Soghoian, a principal technologist at the ACLU. ... "
Date	12/31/2015
Added by	SMPS Editor
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