Microsoft will no longer search users’ private information when investigating the theft of digital or physical assets belonging to the company. Instead, they will in future inform the police if necessary.
The company recently came under fire for searching a Hotmail account of a French blogger who distributed company software for evidence related to the theft. The evidence was found and a former Microsoft employee was subsequently arrested. When that came out, Microsoft was criticized for the way the company changed its policy.
The company would only peek into a user’s mailbox under the new policy if the circumstances existed that would warrant a hypothetical injunction. An actual court order is not possible in these situations: a company cannot be obliged by a judge to browse through its own data. Now that policy is further tightened and Microsoft does not look at the content of users’ private data under any circumstances. The company says it leaves that to the authorities.
Brad Smith of Microsoft’s legal department reports the policy change. He states that ‘after reflection and internal discussions and contact with interest groups and experts’ it was decided to implement the policy change. The company’s policy will be amended immediately, and in the coming months the amendment will also be reflected in the user agreement for Microsoft services. With competing Google, it is technically still allowed for the company to search in user data. However, Kent Walker, one of Google’s lawyers, told Wired that this has never happened to date and that it is “hard to imagine a situation where that would be justified.”