Posted on 12/31/2015 9:16:08 AM PST by Nachum
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 theyâve been targeted by foreign spooks.
Redmondâs alerting system has raised issues about US data breach disclosure laws. âIf China had stolen Hotmail users' passwords, Microsoft would have had to tell users,â Christopher Soghoian, a principal technologist at the ACLU, stated in an update to his personal Twitter account But *private emails* are not considered PII [personally identifiable information].â
(Excerpt) Read more at theregister.co.uk ...
The list, Ping
Let me know if you would like to be on or off the ping list
“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.”
Hmm, I think they made me change my password around that time, those red bastards probably got me.
Pinging for the Windows Ping list. . .
I say the NSA is hacking into this site and causing all those random special characters!! : )
It doesn’t.
This doesn’t really bother me. As part of the great OPM hack, China and Russia already know everything about me. I sort of wish that our government knew as much about me as the Chinese and Russians do.
Recently, my wife and I met a young West Point Grad (anyone under 65 years old is young to us), who has started his own IT business after he was one of those OPM hacked. He uses his we are sorry you were hacked letter from OPM as his sales aid to get attention from potential clients.
It doesn’t say how the ‘victim’ will be contacted by Microsoft. If you get an email from Microsoft, saying you have been hacked, would you believe it? Just click here for details.
I say the NSA is hacking into this site and causing all those random special characters!! : )
Actually those random “characters” are Jim’s and John’s method to confuse “NSA’s”, the “Chicom’s” and “Opecker Prince’s/Isis’s” hacking of our “posts” and “replies”.
I’ve got Windows 7. They keep asking me to upgrade to the wonderful 10. Not gonna do it. Aw, CRAP! Can the spooks see this?
They just sent me one of these alerts on Sunday.
Getting hard to know who’s the criminal and who’s the good guy.
“partly to avoid antagonising China,” ????
It would seem MS has sunk to the level of the political trash representing us in DC.
I have Win7 too .. and I’m not going to upgrade either.
I just use my computer to connect with family and friends, and write my books.
Therefore, I do not need all the bells and whistles of Win10. My only concern is if they stop updating Win7 (like they did to XP [which I loved]), then I’ll have to decide if I want to go to Win10, or choose Apple. I’ve never used Apple, so I know nothing about it.
The only external thing I do is cover up the camera opening at the top of my computer’s frame around my screen. I did this only because it was reported that new software would allow people to see me. I didn’t want that to happen, so I covered up the lens. If I decide to use Skype, I can just remove the cover on the lens .. easy.
And .. I have Norton .. and I rarely even get people trying to tap into my system. And .. I use the Norton tools to check the cookies they delete from my system .. in case there is anything I would consider suspicious.
I’ve never had malware successfully installed, or had the launching of Trojan emails. These items are always caught by Norton and neutralized.
Plus, I have LifeLock to protect my online transactions; which is connected to my bank transactions. Never have a problem.
It’s possible that someday somebody will find a way around these things .. but with Norton, I use their program to update Norton on a daily basis. In the last few days, it’s been at least 4-5 updates every day.
I tried the Windows 10 thingy.
If you opt out of all the invasive stuff (keylogging, mS reporting, allowing your PC to act like an update distributor, etc.) it’s almost like Windows 7.
Only reason I went back to 7 was that my RAID controller wasn’t supported and had no drivers for it available.
Thanks to Swordmaker for the ping!
Not to worry. MSFT has promised support for Win 7 through at least 2020.
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