Was this decision made in Redmond or in Israel? Microsoft has offices in Israel and these offices are likely responsible for things happening in Israel, Gaza and the West Bank.<p>Israel is currently at "war" with Gaza and having Israeli employees of Microsoft having the ability to disable anyone's account calling civilians in Gaza is pretty horrible.<p>Is Microsoft via Skype and Hotmail participating in what Israel's leaders are call the "complete siege"? <a href="https://www.timesofisrael.com/liveblog_entry/defense-minister-announces-complete-siege-of-gaza-no-power-food-or-fuel/" rel="nofollow">https://www.timesofisrael.com/liveblog_entry/defense-ministe...</a><p>No appeal and no explanation available does suggest to me the shutdown orders may have come from Israeli security services or the Israeli army.
Every time I read a story like this, about MS or Google or Twitter or which-ever big corporate it is, I'm <i>so</i> glad that I exited these platforms and years ago.<p>I left LinkedIn before MS bought it, because it was clear it was being copied by all and sundry.<p>I left GitHub once MS bought it (and I thank God for that, ever time I see another story about MS being awful).<p>I never used Google - they were obviously evil and from quite early on.<p>I may be completely wrong, but I think large companies are completely amoral. Not in a malicious way, but in a can't-be-anything-else kind of way; that is is an emergent property.<p>All large organization have absolutely no moral sense, which is to say, doing things because they are ethical, regardless of costs or benefits, or possessing a capability to assess or modify their own actions on moral criteria.<p>Complaining MS do these things is like complaining a cat jumps on a mouse.<p>I'm not a fan of brutal mouse death, so I don't own a cat.<p>What's critical of course is knowing this, and <i>before</i> deciding to buy into what these companies offer, rather than <i>discovering</i> it after buying into what these companies offer.<p>And these companies will only tell you how wonderful their services are, and nothing about what they're up - nothing about how much and what data they collect, and what they do with it (give it to the State, sell it to all and sundry, with real-time updates included), or what's done with it (mandatory State mass interception).
This is why I have my own domain and control the MX records on the DNS on it, so that I can reroute email to a new email provider, if needed (I pay for Fastmail).<p>Another nice thing about having a catch-all on own domain is that you can sign up to each service with a unique email address, e.g. <microsoft>@<your-domain.com>, which makes it easy to see if any services ever sold your address.
US gov tells companies that xyz groups are under sanctions (which is good, actually) and that they must put effort into preventing them from using their products (also good, actually). The problem is that they are punished for true negatives (in the press and potentially by the gov) but not for false positives (except for articles like this). The end result is overzealous bullshit that ends up hurting innocent people. For another example, the US gov told Paypal that they need to prevent transactions related to a weapon smuggling shell company "Tarigrade Limited" (which as I've said before, is good actually) but they implemented it to just block transactions and freeze accounts if "Tarigrade" is in the notes. Similarly, I know of a small store that sells patches that got their account frozen for some time because they released a patch with a firearm in it and had the gall to put the name of the firearm in the name of the product.<p><a href="https://www.vice.com/en/article/n7wg3w/paypal-tardigrade-error" rel="nofollow">https://www.vice.com/en/article/n7wg3w/paypal-tardigrade-err...</a>
If technology becomes necessary to participate in society, and if we cede control of that technology to unaccountable dystopian hypercorporations like Microsoft, Google, and Apple, then we're setting ourselves up for disaster.
Anyone know why this post is flagged? I get that there is an aspect of 'Most stories about politics' but at the same time the tech censorship angle here is high and likely in-line with 'Anything that good hackers would find interesting.'
It is incredibly frustrating to realize that a lot of companies are within their right to deny you service as soon as you even _appear_ to pose a risk to them.<p>Geico recently denied my renewal of insurance because they said their underwriters received notification that I use my vehicle for business. (I don't.) I have spent hours trying to explain to them that this is a mistake, but they have zero interest in providing me with insurance. I've heard this is common for people in CA.<p>I'm not sure what legal recourse the people in this story have. Hopefully they have a legal right to at least download an archive of their data so they can recover old emails, attachments, photos, etc.
I've never felt comfortable using Microsoft, Google, Meta, etc products.<p>In the recent months and with the increasing possibilities of surveillance with AI and how they are controlling the narrative of things, it made me feel incredibly uneasy. No more of these products on my devices.
If you are in Europe and this happens to you, the GDPR gives you at least a partial solution: they don't have to give you your account back, but at least they have to provide you access to a backup of your data.<p>NOYB has a list of what your rights are [1] and "My Data Done Right" [2] provides a handy tool for finding out who to contact and how.<p>[1] <a href="https://noyb.eu/en/exercise-your-rights" rel="nofollow">https://noyb.eu/en/exercise-your-rights</a><p>[2] <a href="https://www.mydatadoneright.eu/" rel="nofollow">https://www.mydatadoneright.eu/</a>
We live in a world where large corporations, FAANG companies in particular have greater money and resources than entire nations. This is not a situation with historicla paralel. But it's remained largely irrelevant militarily because those companies remaining neutral - like Switzerland. If they become politisized, and act on that alignment; it potentially openes up a whole new vector of military targets which are otherwise unthinkable. I don't like thinking about the future consequences on that trajectory.
Another example of why we need FLOSS and open platforms, so instead of calling via Skype and maybe using Windows he/she use GNU/Linux and call via Ring or host a small GNU SIPWitch, and maybe also offer wireguard to hes/shes peers to reduce snooping.<p>If such use of tech that already exists since decades became spread ALSO the giant will learn to be good citizens not "state-like entity" acting as bully.
I've spread my life around several email providers, including myself. I have at least 50 email accounts (inc pre-Microsoft Hotmail).<p>In the last 10 years, I've lost access to ~5 accounts, usually when the provider axed their free offerings (is fine). In every case, I had warning and time to switch.<p>If I lose access to one w/o warning, it would be a problem but not catastrophic.<p>In short: What is the trivial solution to not risking sudden catastrophic loss of email? I don't think there is one. The answers are high-effort, high-maintenance. Technical ability can lessen that some.<p><pre><code> note: The reason I don't lean into self-hosted mail harder is spam filtering. I've hosted mail for small biz and have put many, many hours into reducing spam. On top of the usual edge solutions, I write scripts to help mitigate spam and malware campaigns.
But the more visible my domain, the more anti-spam work is required and that state only ever ratchets one way.</code></pre>
In order to maybe stop a few from engaging in acts that may harm people we actually harm many and accept it as collateral damage. It is doubly unfortunate that when it comes to Palestinians 'collateral damage' in all forms is acceptable for even the most trivial of potential gains.
> They’ve suspended my email account that I’ve had for nearly 20 years<p>Another reason why you should have your own domain and be independent from any services is that it can happen to anyone, never put your eggs in one basket.
I've just read this <a href="https://medium.com/@notechforapartheid/a-marriage-made-in-hell-an-introduction-to-microsofts-complicity-in-apartheid-and-genocide-d7dfad65a196" rel="nofollow">https://medium.com/@notechforapartheid/a-marriage-made-in-he...</a><p>For me the mass killing of children is completely unacceptable and there's absolutely no excuses, zero. And Microsoft's participation in that is a real shock for me.
as of 2023 the US officially sanctions 26 countries. If we are to expect that for every phone call to one of these 26 untouchables we will receive holy retribution from the US corporate class, then im afraid sanctions have defeated the very west they were intended to empower.<p>Microsoft has an infuriating habit of doing this; its not just a one-off. They routinely lockout international github users and feign innocent compliance when caught.
> can no longer access his bank accounts, which are tied to his Hotmail account, he says.<p>Come on. This is such exaggeration. Surely he has contacted the banks (note: plural as per article) and he can access his accounts. Not even one?<p>Banks routinely handle identification via phone to access your account and transact.