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Outlook is Microsoft's new data collection service
- NikolaNovak 3y agoI get absolutely positively outraged when a paid for product such as Operating System or MS Office starts bombarding me with ads. I get that this was entirely predictable (see XKCD exhibit 1), and that once we allowed it in websites and webapps there were no real barriers left to downloaded installed native local apps, and my outrage is too little too late. And I get that saying "I'm now installing Linux on my laptop" is... nice but irrelevant. 0.01% of userbase doing that will make laughably no dent. But it's really really getting too much. Grumble Grubmle everybody get off my lawn! :-/ Relevant XKCD: https://xkcd.com/743/ https://xkcd.com/743/
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- pierat 3y agoThat XKCD sums up why I *WONT* pirate programs. That's how Adobe got to where they are. People pirated their stuff (and bought legitimately), got their stuff trapped in their formats. Then they turned the screws and locked people out of their own content. Autodesk did the same exact thing too, with Inventor and Eagle. Your personal data is too important to be used as some ransomware (read: proprietary programs). Cause then, it's not just the finding an alternate program, but figuring out how to export.... if they even let you.
- xnx 3y agoDon't GIMP, Paint.net, and Photopea all open Photoshop files? Lock-in sucks, but Photoshop is much easier to give up than something like Salesforce.
- ParetoOptimal 3y agoThey do, but compatibility isn't perfect and fixing anything requires huge reverse engineering knowledge or prior knowledge. See: "... PSD is not a good format. PSD is not even a bad format. Calling it such would be an insult to other bad formats... If there are two different ways of doing something, PSD will do both, in different places. It will then make up three more ways no sane human would think of, and do those. PSD makes inconsistency an art form... Earlier, I tried to get a hold of the latest specs for the PSD file format. To do this, I had to apply to them for permission to apply to them to have them consider sending me this sacred tome. This would have involved faxing them a copy of some document or other, probably signed in blood. I can only imagine that they make this process so difficult because they are intensely ashamed of having created this abomination..." https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=575122 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=575122 https://layervault.tumblr.com/post/56891876898/psdrb https://layervault.tumblr.com/post/56891876898/psdrb https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6129237 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6129237
- dirtyhippiefree 3y ago>I can only imagine that they make this process so difficult because they are intensely ashamed of having created this abomination... There is no shame in that game.
- robertlagrant 3y ago> Then they turned the screws and locked people out of their own content How did Adobe do this?
- jampekka 3y agoProbably referring to the SaaS turn?
- robertlagrant 3y agoBut you still have the current software and your current files. Who's locked out?
- vetinari 3y agoThat last, non-rented version might not run on the current hardware. Like CS2, which ran on PowerPC Macs. Intel and ARM macs need not apply.
- dylan604 3y agoDidn't they go well beyond CS2 though? Why did you pick such an old version? We ran Adobe on Intel Macs well before SaaS. In fact, we were running Adobe Premiere before Final Cut was released.
- robertlagrant 3y agoThat's not locking you out of your content, though. If Adobe vanished then we wouldn't say that they locked us out of our files when a new chipset came along. I don't think they have a mandate to deliver future changes to their software for nothing that maintain chipset support for anything we might buy.
- NikolaNovak 3y ago* Adobe switched to subscription model. * Locked-in (for various reasons) userbase moved in to subscription model en masse, begrudgingly and complainingly * Now, as soon as you stop subscription, your software stops working, and your catalogue will not work with pre-subscription files We can debate semantics of "turned on the screws" and "screwed over", but take it on my word that most of us are feeling thus :). Yes we were hoisted by own petard and choices.
- sonicanatidae 3y agoI do both. If I get legitimate use out of an app, I purchase it, but I also pirate a copy and store it on the NAS. I bought it and I will own a copy forever. They can just get over it. They were paid.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- pge 3y agoAfter 20+ years on Outlook, I recently switched to Thunderbird. Not quite as full featured and a little slow at times, but it’s finally a viable replacement for Outlook.
- Duanemclemore 3y agoWelcome to the fold! I've used Thunderbird since it was released. It's always been a great product imo. The whole time I've had outlook provided by whatever office or institution I was associated with for comparison. Given the choice, even almost 20 years ago I'd have taken t-bird head to head.
- boplicity 3y agoI wish I could use Thunberdird. It grinds to a halt far too often for me. We have very large inboxes, so maybe that's a factor.
- timvisee 3y agoIt handles 150k messages in a folder without a sweat for me. Do you have more?
- dangrossman 3y agoMy Thunderbird profile folder is 22GB in size. I have hundreds of thousands of emails in it. The fact that it can handle all my large mailboxes is why I still use it.
- gosukiwi 3y agoIf you are on Windows, the antivirus might have something to do. It used to be slow for me too but I added an exception and now it's really fast, or at least fast enough so I don't perceive any significant lag.
- boplicity 3y agoThat's a good idea. It tends to lag when downloading messages.
- havaloc 3y agoI do some tech support on the side. No one, and I mean no one wants to pay for email. So here we are.
- fnordpiglet 3y agoI pay for proton mail and am quite happy to do so. In fact I pay for everything I use on the internet if I can. Kagi, proton, etc, unless there’s an open source option. I even buy the family versions and share with my parents.
- sonicanatidae 3y agoThe problem is, even when email is paid for, like an O365 account, the clients are still forced into being the product.
- worble 3y agoI pay for Migadu and very happy with it
- zeagle 3y agoMe too. Another vote for them.
- moose44 3y agoThe cool part about Proton is they bundle a lot of their services. You aren't just paying for email—you're paying for VPN, encrypted cloud storage and more.
- tiahura 3y agoWhy is it cool to pay for stuff you may not use?
- moose44 3y agoYou're missing the point, however, I'll entertain it. Most services just offer a paid email. Proton offers all of its services for an extremely low monthly price. Not to mention their security protocols are among the best. Everyone uses email. Most use a VPN (everyone should) and almost everyone utilizes some form of cloud storage. I started off purchasing to use their VPN and now actively use all 3.
- sonicanatidae 3y agoI'm am sick to death of being forced into being targeted by Ads. I already run Pi-hole and use Brave, now I have to avoid Outlook. Thanks microsoft. We don't have enough attack vectors already, so it's nice for you to compile all of our information to make it much easier for bad actors to gain our information. I'm sure the pittance fine levied against them, not if, but FUCKING WHEN, they get breached will teach them a lesson. /End -Rant
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- thesuitonym 3y agoIf you're upset about ads, why are you using Brave? It was developed by an adtech company to steal ad revenue from websites and direct it toward their CEO.
- sonicanatidae 3y agoBecause when I use Brave at work, where I don't have Pi-hole running, I don't have to look at the 100s of popups, moving ads, fly-out videos, etc. I couldn't care less who the money goes to. What I care about is actually being able to read a webpage.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- kornhole 3y agoI am often confused by people who have loads of money, live in big houses, and drive nice cars who are not willing to pay a few bucks a month for a private email inbox and other services. I assume they are trapped or too lazy to buy a domain and make the necessary changes. What other reasons could they have?
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- nolongerthere 3y agoMost people still have no idea how a website works, they don't understand what a domain is, how to attach email to it or what the difference is between gmail and email. for 80% of people gmail is effectively personal email and the desktop outlook app is work email, there is no further thoughts on this subject.
- vohk 3y agoI think that's the largest factor. You started with Hotmail, Gmail, or iCloud depending on when you made your first account, or what phone you chose, and then... why change? The UX is typically better, and that was especially true back when Gmail was taking over the market and introduced everyone to the concept of never needing to delete old mail. Good looking apps are available for every device, with minimal setup. Deliverability is so good most people have no concept of ending up in their contact's spam folder. It's what your friends and family are using, and its free. Concerns like privacy or being able to change provider without losing your address are abstract and out of sight.
- Almondsetat 3y agoSimple: invent some magical way to take all my accounts that I have ever registered with my 15 years old email account and change the address to a new one
- int_19h 3y agoThose can be migrated piecemeal over time (and possibly never for those that you don't care about). Most webmail providers these days let you operate another mail account via their interface, so it is all completely integrated in a single app with no need to switch back and forth.
- moose44 3y agoPaying for Proton's services is a no brainer to me. $11 a month for access to VPN, encrypted email, encrypted cloud storage and more. Will gladly pay to not have my data shared with 772 3rd parties.
- izzydata 3y agoI'd rather pay hundreds of dollars for software upfront than a monthly subscription. But I'm still considering paying for the cheapest Proton option.
- moose44 3y agoI agree. I utilize the annual plan so it's a bit cheaper.
- protonmail 3y agoYou can also pay for Proton's services yearly and bi-annually: https://proton.me/mail/pricing https://proton.me/mail/pricing
- izzydata 3y agoBy monthly subscription I mean any subscription. An annual subscription is still a subscription. I want to pay for a perpetual license and never pay again. Unfortunately that would be difficult for an ongoing live service such as email.
- moose44 3y agoNextdns.io is a great (free) addition to this.
- rekoil 3y agoNextDNS Pro is also €25/year. Super reasonable and ridiculously good product.
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- giancarlostoro 3y agoI really love Microsoft but I really also hate their data collection stuff because it comes at a cost of performance and user experience.
- dangus 3y agoWhy would you love Microsoft? I can’t say I “love” any corporation.
- Almondsetat 3y agohttps://img.ifunny.co/images/cb3e3fdac1e137657a1728d9cbfc933d2ba92dfe9186bf40c5ce5f56efda084b_1.jpg https://img.ifunny.co/images/cb3e3fdac1e137657a1728d9cbfc933...
- giancarlostoro 3y agoI mean, I like some key tools they make: Visual Studio, and Visual Studio Code come to mind. MSN Messenger was also a huge part of my life, literally spent a lot of time with my wife over MSN in our early years of knowing each other. Microsoft is a massive company, there's loads to hate and appreciate all at once.
- bastard_op 3y agoThat's crazy that only because of GDPR they expose how nasty Microsoft is selling your data or allow an opt-out, and particularly NOT anyone else including the US. I do hope more mainstream media picks up on this. This ought to be classified as adware itself now by malware detection. Obviously Windoze "Defender" won't have a problem with this I'm sure, no conflict of interests there.
- Pesthuf 3y agoAnd yet every time someone praises EU big tech regulations here, someone from the US inevitably complains it’s just the EU being anticompetitive and that they should also deregulate so they can have big tech of their own. The things we learn thanks to these regulations keep proving why they’re necessary.
- WarOnPrivacy 3y ago> every time someone praises EU big tech regulations here, someone from the US inevitably complains it’s just the EU being anticompetitive ... The things we learn thanks to these regulations keep proving why they’re necessary. The thing-to-learn from the EU rollout: The public is a stakeholder and needs to be represented by 1) folks correctly knowledgeable to do so and 2) be invested with enough weight to not be overruled by govs & corps.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- qwertox 3y agoSomewhat related: https://workspace.google.com/intl/en/terms/subprocessors/ https://workspace.google.com/intl/en/terms/subprocessors/ https://cloud.google.com/terms/subprocessors https://cloud.google.com/terms/subprocessors
- jsnell 3y agoHow is that in any way related? What do you think is being described on those pages?
- binkHN 3y agoWow. Eye opening. Thank you.
- shizcakes 3y agoWhat's eye opening here? These are basically all tech support providers. I'm not saying Google is a privacy-centric company, but this effort to enumerate subprocessors is admirable. The internet becomes a worse place when folks criticize the superficial number rather than the intent.
- binkHN 3y agoThe sheer number of processors. I agree and appreciate this level of detail, but do you know this for all the companies that have access to your data? I don't, so I found this enlightening.
- eitally 3y agoWhere else do you think TVCs come from? Keep in mind that although these are subprocessors, the Accenture, et al employees handling Google user data are red-badged and employed under Google contract terms, which explicitly dictate controls around allowed and disallowed systems and user data access. TBH, it's not that it would be impossible for either Google or a subprocessor to conduct themselves nefariously, but I don't think it's practical or reasonable for anyone to expect that they would. Google pays Accenture, for example, >$1b/yr for services. They absolutely would not want to put that cash cow at risk.
- SubiculumCode 3y agoI wonder what the University of California, which is totally in on Office 365. I would hope that the University would take a strong position...but feel less than confident..surely a business account with M$ will mean something right?
- rdudek 3y agoDoubt it. Microsoft offers sweet deals for academia.
- CharlesW 3y agoThis post is pretty horrifying. If you're in the Apple ecosystem, Apple Mail and iCloud Mail (standards-based, supports custom domains) has been as reliable as any mail provider and client I've ever used.
- boplicity 3y agoAs a newsletter provider, I can say that iCloud is problematic. People who actively want our newsletters often have trouble getting them. iCloud will bounce their emails back for no good reason. Eventually our subscribers will get in touch with us asking why our emails are no longer getting sent to them. This is with very low spam rates, DKIM, and DMARC set up. There's also no good way to contact the iCloud postmaster, which is an option for every other major email service.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- Cacti 3y agoWell that’s… problematic. There’s no business tier support with icloud?
- CharlesW 3y agoSystem admin can get direct support from Apple's iCloud Mail postmaster team at icloudadmin@apple.com. https://support.apple.com/en-us/102322 https://support.apple.com/en-us/102322 has a list of the information they want in order to diagnose and address delivery issues.
- squarefoot 3y agoFor those using Outlook only for email, thus not tied other services, I would strongly suggest taking a look at Claws Mail. https://www.claws-mail.org/index.php https://www.claws-mail.org/index.php It's lightning fast compared to Outlook, and very stable/reliable. Also available on Windows. Outlook .pst files (both mail and contacts) also can be easily ported to Mbox or other standard formats, then imported into Claws Mail, by using the readpst utility which is part of libpst utilities, available on various Linux distros. On Debian it's part of pst-utils. https://www.five-ten-sg.com/libpst/ https://www.five-ten-sg.com/libpst/
- lloydatkinson 3y agoGTK apps on Windows always stand out, in a bad way.
- jesprenj 3y agoI'm used to claws-mail, so I'm using it daily. But I think it's quite terrible -- there are regular delays every minute for a couple of seconds and in that period, most buttons on the UI are disabled. I think that whenever it does something with IMAP most of the functionality is locked. Also I think it doesn't implement IMAP push and it has to poll for new mail every minute. Also opening a mail that's 30 MiB in size (pictures) and has to be downloaded just freezes the entire UI. I'd like to advise people to use other software, but I don't know of any perfect email clients: * sylpheed/claws-mail has this locked UI problem * mutt doesn't render images and has a steep learning curve * thunderbird has software bloat, doesn't work on my low end hardware And other recommendations? Webmail is also mostly broken. I liked prayer, but it also doesn't render images IIRC and roundcube dropped the classic theme on new versions, and the new theme has less information density. I like the classic HTML UI of GMail and OWA, though.
- krackout 3y agoI confirm the issue of delays/freezing of Claws-mail. I really liked the simple UI, but freezing too often, couldn't stand it. I had searched about it, I got some answers that's it's single threaded if I recall well. Since you mentioned mutt and it's steep learning curve, I recommend you another TUI MTA/mail app. It's nmail (https://github.com/d99kris/nmail https://github.com/d99kris/nmail). Simple, Pine/Alpine like interface, has great features (for example, saving mails in sqlite - can be viewed offline). Also the developer is active and friendly, in case you find bugs or have any proposals for enhancements.
- binkHN 3y ago> ...it appears the company has transformed its email app into a surveillance tool for targeted advertising. It's not just Microsoft's email, it's all of Windows too. I tried Windows 11 for the first time not too long ago and it's an abomination of an ad delivery vehicle that makes ChromeOS look magnificent. After too many years of Windows, I finally bit the bullet and installed Linux on my desktop. Within a few weeks I was more productive than I was on Windows and my OS is no longer trying to sell me something constantly, and I should have done it sooner.
- TheCleric 3y agoWindows 11 looks like how IE6 would get after installing too many “toolbars”.
- ljoshua 3y agoI’m curious to know where your productivity boosts came from, as those are always a good motivating factor for me to try something new.
- binkHN 3y agoI feel my productivity boost comes from KDE/Plasma, a surprisingly good desktop environment (DE) that's almost too configurable. The ability to tweak almost every element of the DE, especially as it relates to shortcuts, has already allowed me to move around the environment faster and more readily. Also, *nix has always had the ability to do "Focus follows mouse," and I used something similar in Windows, but it just works better in not Windows. Combine this with a superior file manager in Dolphin and an extremely configurable launcher in KRunner and I'm flying around the desktop in ways that Windows just can't. There's more too, but these are probably the biggest.
- moffkalast 3y agoWatching this "fall of Gnome" with KDE's recent popularity makes me feel strangely vindicated about liking a configurable OS.
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- dist-epoch 3y ago> Although this transfer is secured with Transport Layer Security (TLS), according to Heise Online, your IMAP and SMTP username and password are transmitted to Microsoft in plain text So like every login form in the world, which sends the username and password in plain text over SSL. This is pure FUD.
- tambre 3y agoBut it isn't a password for Microsoft's services that's being sent. It's your username and password for another service you probably didn't intend Microsoft to have your credentials for. And it's intended.
- NoZebra120vClip 3y agoNo, it's not. It's an OAUTH2 connection like a sane app. Proton is ostensibly lying about this credential setup. No app does that anymore.
- snailmailman 3y agoEither way, Microsoft servers get access to your email accounts so that you can view them locally. Why should Microsoft get access to my Gmail or Protonmail? Their servers don’t need access to my email. Old outlook didn’t do that. Thunderbird doesn’t do that. This is completely unnecessary for a mail app. My computer can check my email. No reason for Microsoft servers to do it on my behalf.
- WarOnPrivacy 3y ago> Proton is ostensibly lying about this credential setup. Not sure what your evidence is for lying. Because they're not. When creating an IMAP account, c't was able to sniff the traffic between new Outlook and the Microsoft servers. It contained the target server, log-in name and password which were sent to those Servers of Microsoft. Although TLS-protected, the data is sent to Microsoft in plain text within the tunnel. Without informing or inquiring about this, Microsoft grants itself access to the IMAP and SMTP login data of users of the new Outlook. ref: https://www.heise.de/news/Microsoft-lays-hands-on-login-data-Beware-of-the-new-Outlook-9358925.html https://www.heise.de/news/Microsoft-lays-hands-on-login-data...
- canopener1145 3y agoThis only applies to free accounts, i.e., accounts that have M365 Personal or Family don't have the Advertising section
- surge 3y agoYeah, this just follows the rule of if its free, you are the product, not the customer. You're going to get ads and relinquish your data in exchange for the service. For proton, I assume they have a free tier (I don't know I pay for it). So I guess they let people know to push adoption or get people to make the jump, but the assumption is they have some conversion rate to paying customers. For those that never want to pay for email as their usage scales, they're better off staying.
- Tijdreiziger 3y agoBut you paid for the OS (or the computer it came on), so it wasn’t free.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- surge 3y agoThe service itself is cloud based and no cost.
- n3150n 3y agoAlthough I understand your point, Shoshanna Zuboff would say otherwise. We are the resource; not the product, neither the consumer. According to her, "their" product used to be information. Then it became prediction. And now it's behavior modification, which they achieve by constantly mining us (the data we provide them). At least IMHO, this is a more accurate depiction of the current state of affairs. Although in the end, it may be quite a similar metaphor, either way.
- surge 3y ago
- teekert 3y agoIt’s g. d. everything. I haven’t installed a light switch for the light on our landing yet, so I need the Hue app and every day it slaps an ad in my face. Some days ago my wife came to me: Sonos is blocked by an ad I can’t close! I looked at the screen and there’s a super small cross at the top right. She’s also been complaining her “email changed”, indeed it’s outlook now, and damn it I pay for email not to have this s*t. Maybe I’ll get her to use Linux now (her laptop is perfectly fine but can’t do win11) or at least Thunderbird. Damn it, I pay for email, paid for Hue, paid for Sonos speakers, paid for that laptop. F off with those ads! Enshitification galore! (I'm a proud customer of Proton but only for my business, for the whole family I find the cost just a tad to high to justify so I have a small local provider)
- autoexec 3y agoIt's crazy to think about the amount on insight outlook's data collection must provide on the inner workings of so many companies across so many different industries, even their own competitors. There's no way Microsoft isn't at least trying to use that data for their own benefit, yet somehow the company is still such a mess. Companies just blindly trust MS with their data and even force their employees to hand their personal data over in the process. I've pushed for my company to stop leaking so much company/employee/customer data to MS, but as long as the corporation doesn't personally experience how that data is being used/abused and they aren't being fined or hauled into court over it I doubt much will change.
- sabarn01 3y agoWe don't have access to that data internally. We can't access customer data outside performance metrics about the service. At least for the normal dev there is no real way to get access to what the customer does.
- gtvwill 3y agoThey can access your whole tenant and everything in it. Have had some pretty wild support calls where MSFT has had to crawl through a tenants data specifically the schedule system. It was ultra broken. They can literally just give themselves permission and roll in. If you can't your just not high enough up in a support team. Their use of 3rd party and external tools for adjusting registry during licensing problems is wild.
- sabarn01 3y agoYou can get access with customer permission for a limited time window which is audited. In the normal course of business no.
- graypegg 3y agoThe reality here is that no one will trust a pinky promise. Especially not from Microsoft. You’re fighting a good fight but it’s a losing battle no matter how locked down it feels from your POV. “Can we have access to X, but don’t worry, we don’t let anyone look at X unless Y happens” is a bit suspicious when “grant X permission when Y happens” isn’t an option. Even worse when the access to X is only disclosed to users living in a jurisdiction requiring it. Microsoft’s many brand and marketing folks have a big uphill battle if they want to convince me otherwise. Or they can just stop collecting data.
- zeruch 3y agoI don't think it's "new" at all, but it is getting renewed focus, but also as it ties into the OS side of the house overall. They want to basically make windows machines, telemetry kiosks for every bit of data they can extract.
- whalesalad 3y ago"New" as if this has not been happening forever?
- hnthrowaway0328 3y agoI'm wondering if someone can recommend a Windows email client for gmail and outlook. The official ones are so slow especially for Outlook that it dies for half a minute when opening up. I do have multiple accounts so that could be the reason, but there should never be 30 seconds of non-responding when opening up the app.
- thesuitonym 3y agoThunderbird is great.
- hnthrowaway0328 3y agoThanks, would like to try it out
- bad_user 3y ago“Microsoft changed” indeed.
- stevefeinstein 3y agoThis doesn't seem apply to a paid corporate Office 365 subscription. My work outlook doesn't even have the Advertising Preferences item in settings.
- account-5 3y agoThis is why I'm paying for my email service, and use Linux with thunderbird.
- gavin_gee 3y agoIm not disregarding that there are some dubious data uses here in the consumer version of the new outlook client. But I would be careful to not conflate this to all enterprise versions of the outlook client in office 365 paid plans. Protonmail is using this to drive demand gen for their services. doesn't make them wrong but understand the motivation and how they are pitching the narrative.
- alemanek 3y agoMy paid for version of Outlook on MacOS tried to get me to route all my email, Google workspace, through Microsoft’s servers to “improve my experience”. So, yeah Microsoft is dead to me now. I moved to the Sparkmail (v2) client instead. Proton mail may be trying to capitalize on this newish development but they are also not wrong.
- pfrex 3y agoDon't you need to provide your credentials to sparkmail in order for the app to able to sync across multiple devices? how is that any different from what Outlook tried to make you do?
- alemanek 3y agoEach Sparkmail client connects directly to my Google workspace account and emails are read in app and are not passed through their servers. I authenticate the application with OAuth nothing goes through their backend. Which is also how old outlook works but new outlook wants to man in middle all my email. Edit: https://sparkmailapp.com/help/general/email-storage-and-backups https://sparkmailapp.com/help/general/email-storage-and-back... I don’t use Teams or the Send later feature which does involve their servers.
- TheCleric 3y agoAre you sure this is true? I used Spark a few years back and my work actually froze my account because Spark was accessing it from THEIR server so it showed up for our security team as a leaked password.
- theonlybutlet 3y agoI don't know if it's all in my mind, but Microsoft's targeted advertising in its apps' come across as extremely tacky. Everyone else is probably collecting the same data but it feels less slimey on the surface.
- redbell 3y agoIn some way, unrelated to the topic, I became too concerned to have a consent pop-up without the "Reject All" being clearly the default CTA. Having both buttons marked as "primary" makes it easy to trick the user to choose "Accept" by mistake. Another place where I encounter this behavior is the pop-ups shown by web browsers for sites asking for special, sometimes weird [1], permission like "location" which took me about five seconds to make sure I pick the "Block" button. I hope this sort of behavior gets regulated by the corresponding authorities. 1. I once hear a youtuber say: Why on earth a wallpaper app needs to access my and manage my phone calls?!
- Too 3y agoMicrosoft realized all of their power users already moved to Linux years ago and they might as well fuck whatever sheep that are left even more royally over?
- faeriechangling 3y agoAs much as I hate to say it, that's probably the rational strategy. There's no saving Windows from a glacially paced decline.
- wkat4242 3y agoThis is only if you don't have a paid account though. I have office 365 for business and I don't get these popups. Not that it justifies the behaviour of course but it's not always the case.
- stevesimmons 3y agoMicrosoft Teams on my phone yesterday pushed a Power BI ad into my work chat timeline. I couldn't find a way to turn off these ads. Great way to destroy trust, Microsoft!
- saos 3y agoHow does Proton mail make money?
- vitorgrs 3y agoThe free Proton is very limited, so I do guess most real users pay Proton.
- BanazirGalbasi 3y agoThey have paid tiers. Yes you can get basic email for free, but it has a limited inbox size and filtering options. I think their cheapest is $4/month (USD) which also includes some of their other products. They have higher tiers which expand storage even further, allow for custom domains, and provide access to beta features. Proton also has a VPN, encrypted storage space, and password manager. They're slowly building a full suite of privacy-focused apps with paid tiers for all of them. Development stagnated for a while but it seems like they've made decent progress recently, although their products still don't match the features of Google's app suite. Full disclosure, I have been paying for Proton services for several years now and use them as my primary email provider.
- protonmail 3y agoWe have a freemium subscription model. Users upgrade to get additional storage, more custom domains, priority support, etc. Because our users pay us to protect their privacy, our financial incentives and interests are perfectly aligned with theirs.
- wslh 3y agoHas someone tried the Tiny11 [1] it seems there are security issues involved but would love to hear. Last time I tried to remove all the malware/spyware (e.g. telemetry) it was time consuming. [1] https://www.reddit.com/r/Windows11/comments/1443318/whats_up_with_tiny11_is_it_any_usable/ https://www.reddit.com/r/Windows11/comments/1443318/whats_up...
- oDot 3y agoPeople are hailing Linux, but there's one big elephant in the room -- app sandboxing. While Microsoft surely tracks the Windows user, any software may be tracking the Linux user. I've been on Linux for more than a decade, and even with advancements like Flatpak, Linux is very far from the protections Android, iOS, Mac and Windows have.
- Arnavion 3y agoApp sandboxing is less of a concern when the software you use is built from source in your distro's package repository, and is maintained by distro maintainers whose interests align more closely to yours than the software manufacturer's. Ironically, Flatpaks are software from upstream and thus harder to trust.
- oDot 3y agoYet comments here mention Steam, gaming, photo editing software, and I myself do video editing -- all of those are not going to be packaged by Debian.
- Arnavion 3y agoMy comment is very clearly about open-source software, yes. Also for photo editing and video editing there is open-source software, and there's no reason for Debian to not package it. In any case, "any software may be tracking the Linux user" is an exaggeration. The vast majority of software on the average Linux user's desktop is open-source software from their distro repo.
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- rustcleaner 3y agoQubes OS. Might not be for gaming, but it's perfect for the daily drive!
- oDot 3y ago
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- JonChesterfield 3y agoHere's a tempting business model. 1/ Train AI models on corporate customer email 2/ Ask that AI questions about commercially interesting things 3/ Print money In much the same way that models trained on GPL code write out code which is byte-for-byte identical to but otherwise completely distinct from the code it was trained on, said model will emit interesting emails that have only coincidental correspondence with the commercially sensitive information in the training data set. Microsoft has absolutely everything they need to do this already in place. Obviously they'd never do something unethical like that so it's safe to continue giving them all your corporate email.
- thefurdrake 3y agoSo I now get advertised to by windows: 1) On the login screen (if you let it do its OOBE login background thing) 2) On the post login screen every time I update asking me to sign in to cloud (which is actually asking me to pay for cloud) 3) On the OS notifications on login prompting me to sign in to cloud 4) On the badge of my non-cloud user in the start menu with an orange blip that looks like a notification but is really a prompt to sign in and pay for cloud 5) At the top of my start menu begging me to pay for xbox live 6) Looking at email 7) Any app with AI features that'll be horny to beg you to buy new AI credits. Like notepad.exe Is there a reason I shouldn't continue showing people how to steal their software or /ideally/ invest in alternatives?
- n_plus_1_acc 3y ago8. In the Defender notification, which looks scary, and tells you to setup OneDrive to keep your data safe. If you dare to click on it, it will nag you to change your login from a local account to a MS account.
- effnorwood 3y ago[dead]
- nforgerit 3y agoGerman here. I think what we now see is what local nerds always warned about: US Big Tech is strategically making us dependent on them and when they play the end-game, we're fu*ed. Sure, they will disable the data collection and gladly obey the rules we put in the contracts (how do we know?). But they'll make sure that we're paying extra money for it. They're sucking away our now even more valuable tax money[0] and our idiotic leadership of panic throws more money into this black hole. [0] A "Kleine Anfrage" in the German parliament to the Bundesregierung in December 2023 made it public (but mostly ignored) that the German Bundesregierung will pay 6bn EUR to Microsoft and Oracle in the upcoming years. Source (in German): https://www.zdf.de/nachrichten/politik/deutschland/it-open-source-bundesregierung-kleine-anfrage-100.html https://www.zdf.de/nachrichten/politik/deutschland/it-open-s...
- squigglydonut 3y agoLook just don't use it anymore.
- sakesun 3y agoThis post recall me the Gmail man ad from Microsoft. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eFCSp23xl40 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eFCSp23xl40
- Friedduck 3y agoWe spent years moving to forced encryption and multi-factor authentication for this? Microsoft could answer questions like: Which of my employees is leaking info to a competitor? Looking for a new job? I’m buying a property. What’s the level of interest from other buyers? A client is applying for life insurance. Does he have any serious health issues? Far-fetched or not, someone will be selling insights that would surprise you