A note circulating from Microsoft to holders of Outlook email accounts, under the heading 'Our Terms of use are Changing' ..... You may want to go ahead and follow their links to learn about what they actually propose beginning in August, 2014.
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Our users' needs are at the center of everything we do. That's why we are updating the Microsoft Services Agreement and providing a Privacy Statement for Windows Services. We want to take this opportunity to highlight some of the key changes and what they mean for you.
Privacy As part of our ongoing commitment to respecting your privacy, we won't use your documents, photos or other personal files or what you say in email, chat, video calls or voice mail to target advertising to you.
Transparency We updated our Code of Conduct so you can better understand the types of behaviors that could affect your account, and added language that parents are responsible for minor children's use of Microsoft account and services, including purchases.
Simplicity We tailor our privacy statements for each of our products to help make it easier for you to find the information that is important to you.
The Microsoft Services Agreement applies to your Microsoft account and includes many of our customer services such as Outlook.com, OneDrive, and Bing, while the privacy statement explains how your personal information is collected, used and protected across your Microsoft account, Outlook.com and OneDrive.
The new updates to these will take effect on July 31, 2014. If you continue to use our services after July 31, 2014, you agree to the updated terms or, if you don't agree, you can cancel your service at any time.
Thank you for using Microsoft services
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There are several links attached to the mail which allow you to follow and learn what to expect.
What I expect is that they are counting on the fact that you just trust them and will not explore your privacy further.
Professing to protect you and your private communication is one thing, following the edicts of the Patriot Act and Homeland Security and allowing the FBI, CIA, NSA and various other government agencies to access your email is another.
Microsoft might be honest is assuring you that THEY will not read your email content, but they have no ability to stop the above agencies from following everything you do through your email transcripts. private companies trying to stop government access to your personal information is prohibited by law and even telling you that someone is reading your email information can result in a huge penalty and unwanted attention.
We suspect that hundreds of thousands, perhaps even millions of email account holders, have migrated to safer email carriers and that Microsoft is feeling the losses. (As is the so-called Cloud storage that no one trusts to be secure from NSA back door access)
Some would suggest that you start now and set-up a more private, encrypted email account, and transfer your email content history, saved contacts and anything else important to your privacy concerns to the safe account and leave Microsoft and the NSA on their own. You needn't actually notify Microsoft of your actions, you simply clear out information and abandon the account and tell your friends and any businesses to switch, wait a time until you're sure nothing is going into the old Outlook account and then close it. Be warned though, you will not be deleting your previous web history, that may remain on the servers, but you might be protecting the privacy of your future history, and millions of other web users are very worried about that too.
If it is important to you, you will find those other safe accounts. If you, like thousands, say you have nothing to hide because you're not doing anything wrong, and need not change anything, good luck.
You have fair warning to do it before July 31, 2014.
Is Prism watching you?
emailspyalert
nationalpost.the-spy-who-read-my-email
what is Prism?
