Microsoft Toughened Rules after Corporate Spying Incident

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Microsoft Toughened Rules after Corporate Spying Incident

The software giant admitted it had to change its privacy rules after the trouble it faced upon hacking into a customer’s email during a corporate spying case. You might remember the story about an ex-Microsoft employee arrested for leaking trade secrets and software builds to some blogger.

The court documents show that Microsoft snooped into email accounts of the blogger in attempt to crack the case. The company admitted that during an investigation of an employee it managed to discover evidence showing that its engineer was providing stolen intellectual property, including code relating to Windows activation process, to a 3rd party.

Microsoft explained that in order to protect its customers and the security and integrity of its software, the company conducted an investigation over many months with law enforcement agencies in several countries. Finally, Microsoft obtained a court order to carry out the search of a home relating to evidence of the criminal acts involved. It also found clear evidence that the 3rd party was going to sell Microsoft keys and had done so in the past. As part of the investigation in question, the company carried out a "limited review" of the blogger’s Microsoft operated accounts. However, the company might not be so confident about how it handled this case.

Now Microsoft has announced changes about the way investigations like that are handled in the future. The company admitted that Outlook and Hotmail email are and should be private. This is why it wanted to explain how it is evolving its privacy policies. Since the courts don’t issue orders authorizing someone to search themselves, the software giant promised it would comply with the standards applicable to obtaining a court order and would add another step in the process.

For example, it promised to submit the evidence to an outside attorney who used to be a federal judge, and to conduct such a search only if that judge similarly concluded that there was evidence sufficient for a court order. The company also promised to publish the information on the number of such searches conducted and the number of customer accounts affected.

In the meantime, Microsoft noted that those changes wouldn’t apply to internal investigations of Microsoft employees who it finds in the course of a company investigation are using their personal accounts for corporate business.