April 3, 2001

1:31 PM

Do you use Hotmail for email? If so, it looks like Microsoft owns all your messages and can reprint or repurpose them however they like. I'd assume the ToS could be extended to cover any content on a passport-using website as well. Scary stuff, considering all the Hailstorm services on the way...
posted by mathowie (12 comments total)

i use it for my junkmail, free porn messages that lead to mazes of java-pop-ups, and news...

what if a diary or bloggish type service did the same thing?
posted by th3ph17 at 1:37 PM on April 3, 2001

does this mean they have someone regularly reading all the hotmail on the off chance that something worth grabbing is sent?
posted by o2b at 2:18 PM on April 3, 2001

Didn't Yahoo try this a while ago and get thoroughly scathed for it?
posted by frykitty at 2:23 PM on April 3, 2001

AYEABTM?

*ooch*
posted by CrazyUncleJoe at 2:24 PM on April 3, 2001

I think there's some confusion here. The new TOS applies to "Passport", not directly to Hotmail.

Hotmail uses Passport for validation, but not for mail storage.
posted by Steven Den Beste at 2:25 PM on April 3, 2001

To clarify on that point Steven, the TOS applies to all Passport.com services,
of which hotmail, msn, bcentral, etc all are classified. When, and its a when
thing, Hailstorm hits, any site that that uses passport.com for
authentication must abide by those TOS, and I would imagine, the end user
thats using the passport.com service.


I can't even begin to think of how this could affect Windows XP when that ships, since it's
supposed to be hooked into passport.com(hailstorm, whatever) as well.
posted by djc at 2:46 PM on April 3, 2001

If you read the ToS in context and completely, it's pretty clear that what they're referring to is posts to forum-type sites, not interpersonal communications.

This is boilerplate ToS stuff, and until I hear from an IP/(c) lawyer that the Passport stuff applies to Hotmail, I'll chalk all this up to more anti-MS knee jerk hysteria.
posted by brantstrand at 3:15 PM on April 3, 2001

It's hardly knee-jerk when it applies to Microsoft.

I just can't wait until my e-mail privacy provider allows for on the fly encryption. Then it doesn't matter that Hotmail has my e-mail in it... Microsoft can quote me saying "jfdsjh sda kug11adfgs sa4djhfsdj6hg ljkhusad4ffdvxcui saiusadg 8w dsuds0fuweqr kasd o87v ausiuidshgqw2jh aksjd38" all day long. I won't care.
posted by silusGROK at 3:38 PM on April 3, 2001

Microsoft's respone.
posted by mathowie at 3:58 PM on April 3, 2001

From their response...

Pilla said Microsoft adheres to strict privacy policies by posting privacy statements on its site...

They own the content. That's set-out in the ToS. So when they change their "privacy" policy (a la Amazon) to say that they will now allow themselves to do with the information as they please, they'll still be on the right side of the law, and on the wrong side of privacy.
posted by silusGROK at 4:30 PM on April 3, 2001

So when they change their "privacy" policy (a la Amazon) to say that they will now allow themselves to do with the information as they please, they'll still be on the right side of the law, and on the wrong side of privacy.

It's behavior like that that leads to regulation. And hopefully it happens sometime soon.
posted by redleaf at 9:39 PM on April 3, 2001

Nice try, CrazyUncleJoe, but this is a case of...
All Your Bits Are Belong To Us.
posted by Tubes at 12:12 AM on April 4, 2001