According to Reuters, Microsoft said on Wednesday that it will begin warning users of its services including email when the company suspects that a government has been trying to hack into their accounts. The policy change comes days after it was revealed that they didn’t warn international leaders of China’s Tibetan and Uighur minorities.
Reuters added that according to two former employees of Microsoft, the company’s own experts concluded several years ago that Chinese authorities had been behind the campaign but the company did not pass on that information to users of its Outlook service.
Recently Facebook, Twitter and Yahoo! announced that they would inform users if governments tried to hack into their accounts. Google was the first one to adopt this. However, Microsoft does alert users if their account is being hacked, they just don’t tell you who the source is. Now they’ll tell the user if they believe the attacker is state-sponsored. This is definitely a win in my book. A lot of activists and other important political figures rely on Outlook and if hostile governments are trying to target them, they have a right to know so they can take the necessary measures in protecting themselves. The fact that most state-sponsored hacking are conducted by notorious criminals doesn’t help either. It’s great Microsoft will let users know.
Source: Reuters
Asher and Xian is a shared byline ICXM used for 18 articles co-authored between 2015–2017 covering game reviews, and Xbox news. See the individual contributor profiles for the writers behind these collaborations.