Microsoft has admitted to accessing and searching the inbox of one of its Hotmail customers, who is suspected of receiving secret information about the company. This news comes as former Microsoft employee Alex Kibkalo faces criminal charges after he was accused of leaking Windows 8 details to a blogger in France.
In response to the questions this raised over the company’s privacy policies, Microsoft vice-president, John Frank, said: “While our actions were within our policies and applicable law in this previous case, we understand the concerns that people have.”
From now on, Microsoft has agreed to use an external legal team before investigating its users’ accounts.
“As an additional step, we will then submit this evidence to an outside attorney who is a former federal judge. We will conduct such a search only if this former judge similarly concludes that there is evidence sufficient for a court order,” Frank said.
Many webmail and cloud service providers, including Apple, Google and Yahoo, have similar terms in their privacy agreements, effectively reserving the right to look through their users’ emails if they believe that doing so will protect the rights or property of the company against harm.
