5 ms·

This will have absolutely zero impact. Everybody knows you must use Microsoft products and if those don't comply with regulations, the regulations will have to

This will have absolutely zero impact. Everybody knows you must use Microsoft products and if those don't comply with regulations, the regulations will have to change...

ifeeltriedboss 4y ago
And what would be the alternative? LibreOffice with its 90s UI/UX?
- janmarsal 4y ago
  I wish I had ms office with its 90s UI/UX instead of whatever garbage it evolved into.
  - ifeeltriedboss 4y ago
    It's available to download at libreoffice.org
    - InCityDreams 4y ago
      Ms office is available to download 'at libreoffice.org'?
      - gtirloni 4y ago
        They're joking that LibreOffice looks like MS Office in the 90's
  - Kwpolska 4y ago
    Office 95 works on Windows 11: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_jSfIroiFdA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_jSfIroiFdA So you can buy a copy of your favourite old Office version on eBay or whatever and use that.
    - 2-718-281-828 4y ago
      going from obscure binary to zipped xml was the one good improvement one would miss out on.
  - Qem 4y ago
    I prefer LibreOffice Calc to Excel thanks to the sane 90s UI/UX as well.
- jeroenhd 4y ago
  LibreOffice has a ribbon these days. There are several ways to run it in the cloud with simultaneous editing. I don't know what the default UI settings are like these days, but the UI design is quite comparable to Office. I suppose Office went "everything is flat and coloured rectangles" but I don't think that's necessarily a good thing.
- pjmlp 4y ago
  For many people even the Windows 3.1 versions would suffice.
foepys 4y ago
It could lead to billions in fines for Microsoft. Up to 4% global revenue - for each EU country.
- baxtr 4y ago
  Can you provide a precedent where this has happened?
- vdfs 4y ago
  It's just the cost of doing business for them, implementing and complaining with EU laws might cost even more than the fine
  - piva00 4y ago
    The fine is so outrageously high (up to 4% of global revenue) exactly so this argument can't be made. It's really hard to imagine that implementing proper privacy controls would cost 4% of Microsoft's global revenue, it amounts to US$ 8B for the past year...
    - vdfs 4y ago
      But more privacy mean less data they get and less revenue they generate by using that data, similar to how Meta/Google are affected by Apple privacy changes, at least that's my speculation
- throwaway294566 4y ago
  It would really depend on the situation to be decided, whether MS would have to pay up, or rather the company using MS products to handle customer data. One can imagine a way to use MS products that might not be illegal, e.g. never use it to process personal data, use anonymized accounts that are not bound to a real person, swap around accounts and computers to prevent association with a person, etc. Then, all it would take for MS to get its 'get out of jail free'-card is to publish that in a whitepaper and make all the problems just be an unfortunate misconfiguration by the company using MS products.
ofrzeta 4y ago
We regularly discuss GDPR matters in our German company because there's a lot of FUD concerning the various cloud platforms and we have to cater to sensitive customers with our own hosting. One extreme is that you can't use AWS at all because of Schrems and it's a US compancy etc. On the other hand there's some hearsay about Microsoft (Azure) being tolerated because there's no way around it.
- throwaway294566 4y ago
  Imho, the "FUD" is largely right and most cloud platforms are indeed illegal. However, due to enforcement being absent or taking ages, there are too few legal decisions and big expensive enforcement actions that one can point to. Currently everything is really still fear, uncertainty and doubt, the hammer hasn't come down yet. I'm not sure if it ever will, at least not before EU institutions or other member states such as France force Germany to stop dragging its feet.
  - baxtr 4y ago
    And meanwhile German company Continental has just 40 TB of data from their own systems.
  - ofrzeta 4y ago
    It's a bit tedious to work in that climate of uncertainty. Every time we want to use some AWS service it prompts endless discussions. On the other hand it made us research and use European alternatives such as Hetzner (they have a cloud too, although with less SaaS offerings), OVH or Scaleway.
orwin 4y ago
You can still use office365. It's just that the cloud-based M365 shouldn't be used. TBH, i used to work at a bank (and now at an energy company), and anecdotal evidence i have is that no big business use M365 cloud services(2 for 2 now). At least not in the IT departement, even where we have people using access to mash .xlsx together and get actionnable data from it. [edit] I must add that the bank used azure (as an AWS backup mostly), and still, we had no M365 product installed on our microsoft computer. I'm not a hater or anything, i do have a FOSS bias, but i try to stick to the facts here.
jkaplowitz 4y ago
What a depressing reality where hostile US corporate data privacy practices and hostile US surveillance law take de facto priority over the EU's own privacy legislation meant to protect its own residents. I wish the EU politicians and regulators were more willing to enforce their own rules, and that the ECJ were more willing to be explicit rather than implicit about the meaning of its Schrems rulings, all of which would eventually force a privacy-protective solution to the problems you describe. They have more power over MS than they think if they're willing to exercise it, but they're mostly not willing. (Examples like the Dutch public sector do exist, where they were able to get different terms from MS that are more compliant with the GDPR, including effective audit rights that have successfully verified compliance with these terms.)
- Silhouette 4y ago
  What a depressing reality where hostile US corporate data privacy practices and hostile US surveillance law take de facto priority over the EU's own privacy legislation meant to protect its own residents. The EU has provisions for very similar "hostile surveillance law" in its own member states. It just gave them a get out of jail free card in the GDPR. There is a considerable amount of hypocrisy about the EU's positions on privacy and data protection. The trouble with this whole subject is that you get grandstanding politicians trying to make big statements that go so far that it becomes unrealistic to enforce them because you'd cause catastrophic economic and/or social damage. If you really want to improve things what you need is steady, incremental progress towards restricting unwanted invasions of privacy. You can start with the most invasive commercial spyware. After a while you have moved the Overton window so that the worst excesses of governments' own surveillance programmes start to become viable candidates for reform as well. Ideally you eventually move societies away from the politics of fear that motivates those kinds of mass surveillance laws but that doesn't seem likely any time soon.
  - jkaplowitz 4y ago
    Yes, I'm not defending the EU hypocrisy or their own hostile surveillance laws. However, keep in mind that this report mentioned many issues about MS's own processing purposes, policies, and practices, and wasn't only about the problems posed by US surveillance law. It's those MS-specific issues for which the Dutch government got fixes applied to Dutch private sector use of MS 365; naturally they haven't changed US surveillance law. And as bad as government surveillance is in both the EU and the US, it's awful when local companies send the data of the majority of their population into the jurisdiction of surveillance law whose political bosses the population can't even indirectly vote against. This is rare in the US because US companies rarely send the data of US citizens to EU providers, which itself is because the big tech players are American. Whereas for exactly the same reason of where the big tech players are based, it's common for EU companies to send the data of EU citizens to US providers.
hef19898 4y ago
Rather MS will find a way to make Teams GDPR compliant, huge market and huge fines and all such.
- calculated 4y ago
  I'm skeptical about that since EU has activated itself in recent years. The universal USB-C is one example.
Bombthecat 4y ago
Agree,schrems II already paved the way what you need to do/ what needs to be done.. Basically separation of encryption and decryption key in a location other then azure for example. Nobody cared, nothing happened. People still store both in azure. As long no one gets fined ( here companies) nothing will happen
izacus 4y ago
There's already some high level people lobbying to update interpretation of GDPR in a way that it would require proof of actual harm to user for any fines to be issued - essentially completely neutering the regulation.
mikojan 4y ago
s/Microsoft/American/ Privacy Shield was canned years ago but your company is most likely moving data to an American "Anti-Virus" provider under this framework.
e12e 4y ago
It already has an impact according to Microsoft - see this thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33752687 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33752687 It might imply that o365 sevices in the EU/EEC will increase in price - but I'm quite certain the data privacy will be better. Remember that this has implications for all businesses that deliver on government contracts in the EU - they would all have to move away, for example not hosting email with o365 because government won't communicate details involving GDPR protected data over untrusted services (even with encryption enabled).
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]

This will have absolutely zero impact. Everybody knows you must use Microsoft products and if those don't comply with regulations, the regulations will have to change...

ifeeltriedboss 4y ago

And what would be the alternative? LibreOffice with its 90s UI/UX?

janmarsal 4y ago
I wish I had ms office with its 90s UI/UX instead of whatever garbage it evolved into.
- ifeeltriedboss 4y ago
  It's available to download at libreoffice.org
  - InCityDreams 4y ago
    Ms office is available to download 'at libreoffice.org'?
    - gtirloni 4y ago
      They're joking that LibreOffice looks like MS Office in the 90's
- Kwpolska 4y ago
  Office 95 works on Windows 11: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_jSfIroiFdA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_jSfIroiFdA So you can buy a copy of your favourite old Office version on eBay or whatever and use that.
  - 2-718-281-828 4y ago
    going from obscure binary to zipped xml was the one good improvement one would miss out on.
- Qem 4y ago
  I prefer LibreOffice Calc to Excel thanks to the sane 90s UI/UX as well.
jeroenhd 4y ago
LibreOffice has a ribbon these days. There are several ways to run it in the cloud with simultaneous editing. I don't know what the default UI settings are like these days, but the UI design is quite comparable to Office. I suppose Office went "everything is flat and coloured rectangles" but I don't think that's necessarily a good thing.
pjmlp 4y ago
For many people even the Windows 3.1 versions would suffice.

foepys 4y ago

It could lead to billions in fines for Microsoft. Up to 4% global revenue - for each EU country.

baxtr 4y ago
Can you provide a precedent where this has happened?
vdfs 4y ago
It's just the cost of doing business for them, implementing and complaining with EU laws might cost even more than the fine
- piva00 4y ago
  The fine is so outrageously high (up to 4% of global revenue) exactly so this argument can't be made. It's really hard to imagine that implementing proper privacy controls would cost 4% of Microsoft's global revenue, it amounts to US$ 8B for the past year...
  - vdfs 4y ago
    But more privacy mean less data they get and less revenue they generate by using that data, similar to how Meta/Google are affected by Apple privacy changes, at least that's my speculation
throwaway294566 4y ago
It would really depend on the situation to be decided, whether MS would have to pay up, or rather the company using MS products to handle customer data. One can imagine a way to use MS products that might not be illegal, e.g. never use it to process personal data, use anonymized accounts that are not bound to a real person, swap around accounts and computers to prevent association with a person, etc. Then, all it would take for MS to get its 'get out of jail free'-card is to publish that in a whitepaper and make all the problems just be an unfortunate misconfiguration by the company using MS products.

ofrzeta 4y ago

We regularly discuss GDPR matters in our German company because there's a lot of FUD concerning the various cloud platforms and we have to cater to sensitive customers with our own hosting. One extreme is that you can't use AWS at all because of Schrems and it's a US compancy etc. On the other hand there's some hearsay about Microsoft (Azure) being tolerated because there's no way around it.

throwaway294566 4y ago
Imho, the "FUD" is largely right and most cloud platforms are indeed illegal. However, due to enforcement being absent or taking ages, there are too few legal decisions and big expensive enforcement actions that one can point to. Currently everything is really still fear, uncertainty and doubt, the hammer hasn't come down yet. I'm not sure if it ever will, at least not before EU institutions or other member states such as France force Germany to stop dragging its feet.
- baxtr 4y ago
  And meanwhile German company Continental has just 40 TB of data from their own systems.
- ofrzeta 4y ago
  It's a bit tedious to work in that climate of uncertainty. Every time we want to use some AWS service it prompts endless discussions. On the other hand it made us research and use European alternatives such as Hetzner (they have a cloud too, although with less SaaS offerings), OVH or Scaleway.

orwin 4y ago

You can still use office365. It's just that the cloud-based M365 shouldn't be used. TBH, i used to work at a bank (and now at an energy company), and anecdotal evidence i have is that no big business use M365 cloud services(2 for 2 now). At least not in the IT departement, even where we have people using access to mash .xlsx together and get actionnable data from it. [edit] I must add that the bank used azure (as an AWS backup mostly), and still, we had no M365 product installed on our microsoft computer. I'm not a hater or anything, i do have a FOSS bias, but i try to stick to the facts here.

jkaplowitz 4y ago

What a depressing reality where hostile US corporate data privacy practices and hostile US surveillance law take de facto priority over the EU's own privacy legislation meant to protect its own residents. I wish the EU politicians and regulators were more willing to enforce their own rules, and that the ECJ were more willing to be explicit rather than implicit about the meaning of its Schrems rulings, all of which would eventually force a privacy-protective solution to the problems you describe. They have more power over MS than they think if they're willing to exercise it, but they're mostly not willing. (Examples like the Dutch public sector do exist, where they were able to get different terms from MS that are more compliant with the GDPR, including effective audit rights that have successfully verified compliance with these terms.)

Silhouette 4y ago
What a depressing reality where hostile US corporate data privacy practices and hostile US surveillance law take de facto priority over the EU's own privacy legislation meant to protect its own residents. The EU has provisions for very similar "hostile surveillance law" in its own member states. It just gave them a get out of jail free card in the GDPR. There is a considerable amount of hypocrisy about the EU's positions on privacy and data protection. The trouble with this whole subject is that you get grandstanding politicians trying to make big statements that go so far that it becomes unrealistic to enforce them because you'd cause catastrophic economic and/or social damage. If you really want to improve things what you need is steady, incremental progress towards restricting unwanted invasions of privacy. You can start with the most invasive commercial spyware. After a while you have moved the Overton window so that the worst excesses of governments' own surveillance programmes start to become viable candidates for reform as well. Ideally you eventually move societies away from the politics of fear that motivates those kinds of mass surveillance laws but that doesn't seem likely any time soon.
- jkaplowitz 4y ago
  Yes, I'm not defending the EU hypocrisy or their own hostile surveillance laws. However, keep in mind that this report mentioned many issues about MS's own processing purposes, policies, and practices, and wasn't only about the problems posed by US surveillance law. It's those MS-specific issues for which the Dutch government got fixes applied to Dutch private sector use of MS 365; naturally they haven't changed US surveillance law. And as bad as government surveillance is in both the EU and the US, it's awful when local companies send the data of the majority of their population into the jurisdiction of surveillance law whose political bosses the population can't even indirectly vote against. This is rare in the US because US companies rarely send the data of US citizens to EU providers, which itself is because the big tech players are American. Whereas for exactly the same reason of where the big tech players are based, it's common for EU companies to send the data of EU citizens to US providers.

hef19898 4y ago

Rather MS will find a way to make Teams GDPR compliant, huge market and huge fines and all such.

calculated 4y ago
I'm skeptical about that since EU has activated itself in recent years. The universal USB-C is one example.

Bombthecat 4y ago

Agree,schrems II already paved the way what you need to do/ what needs to be done.. Basically separation of encryption and decryption key in a location other then azure for example. Nobody cared, nothing happened. People still store both in azure. As long no one gets fined ( here companies) nothing will happen

izacus 4y ago

There's already some high level people lobbying to update interpretation of GDPR in a way that it would require proof of actual harm to user for any fines to be issued - essentially completely neutering the regulation.

mikojan 4y ago

s/Microsoft/American/ Privacy Shield was canned years ago but your company is most likely moving data to an American "Anti-Virus" provider under this framework.

e12e 4y ago

It already has an impact according to Microsoft - see this thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33752687 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33752687 It might imply that o365 sevices in the EU/EEC will increase in price - but I'm quite certain the data privacy will be better. Remember that this has implications for all businesses that deliver on government contracts in the EU - they would all have to move away, for example not hosting email with o365 because government won't communicate details involving GDPR protected data over untrusted services (even with encryption enabled).

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]