New Outlook sends passwords, mails and other data to Microsoft
mailbox.orgDupe of a dupe, but worth everyone seeing (maybe during the workweek rather than 3-day holiday for some): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38219568
It's insane that companies continue to trust Microsoft. They've been collecting data on every company's email and office documents for ages. They must have a massive amount of insight into the inner workings, goals, and plans of so many companies across so many industries that it's a wonder how MS itself is so poorly run.
May I suggest, as a mental experiment only, that you consider for a moment that the business that they are in is not only Software but also Industrial Espionage. That ought to change your "poorly run" evaluation somewhat in a much more positive (?) direction...
If you feel adventurous you could even apply this line of thought to many other very large multinational US-led "IT" companies. Maybe that would even give you an alternative perspective on why the EU (just to mention one random non-US entity) is getting, well, less cooperative, lately.
Philosophically speaking it's an interesting path of thought, but to bring you back to real life of course there is no such thing.
This is a thought experiment only. Of course no American company would ever even think about engaging in such activities, and if you ask any employee of said company (or any of their peers) they would have absolutely no knowledge of such activity and the mere thought is outrageous, of course.
Down-votes anticipated, so this comment might not last long.
My company is all-in on everything for M$. It is truly horrifying to have all your trade secrets and security infrastructure on the servers of M$. It's a disaster waiting to happen.
Also, why's there a fucking ad on my emails list? What was wrong with the old mail program? It worked fine.
When companies get more extreme with attempts to increase ad revenue, it leads me to believe they're getting squeezed for profits and this is a last ditch effort. Similar to how this "extreme chocolate chunk" cookie has 1 chocolate chunk, not extreme https://www.reddit.com/r/shrinkflation/comments/17sudbp/extr... .
And when companies all over are doing it at the same time feels like a "recession" or whatever is looming.
> What was wrong with the old mail program?
Depends on who you ask. I guess "there were no ads on it" is an applicable answer from MS point of view.
[dupe]
Most of the discussion here days ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38212453
They sent out a warning to every single one of their users about this. It's that big of a deal.
But unfortunately it's not as big a deal as microsoft's other fuckups.
Outlook is not an option. Microsoft is dropping the ball.
Rather, if you're in a company that mandates Outlook, not using it is not an option.
Why do they get passwords by viewing your mailbox
The new Outlook is just an Electron-style interface to a Microsoft webmail app - it's not an email client anymore. So if you want to get email from other providers, you give your credentials to the MS web app and it downloads and stores them on Microsoft's servers.
It's not particularly different from other web email apps, the issue is Microsoft is changing models from email client to web app and they're not being very upfront about it.
They get the password for your mailbox, and store it on their server (instead of locally on your own computer like with a local Outlook installation).
Ah I see. The way it was written seemed like they're getting all the stored passwords. That makes more sense.
Also, they apparently store a copy of all your mails.
The real question is: why are you using Outlook?
Like 99% of enterprises do. It does make you wonder whether theres some hidden disruption opportunity for enterprise email, never given it any thought
For the same reason I use Teams, it's what my workplace pretty much forces me to use.
There were workarounds to redirect the mail to Gmail and manage everything from there instead, but they cracked down on them one after another. The last time I didn't manage to avoid it, so now I'm stuck with that piece of crap.
There isn't honestly that many email clients left. What do you suggest they use, Thunderbird,.. and what, The Bat?
Outlook comes with Windows, it works.
What in some sense has me worried is that even Microsoft doesn't really care about native applications anymore. It's rather hard to take a software company serious, when they don't even want to develop to their own native API. The whole thing is primarily a result of Outlook becoming a blood webapp.
Is there honestly any reason why they couldn't bundle the real Outlook, the one they sell to businesses?
Antitrust
A lot of people just use the defaults (OS, Browser, Email Client, etc.)
Because it's absolutely fantastic.
My employer forces me to, why else?