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Microsoft cutting crucial link to Gaza, Palestinians say
- tamimio 2y ago> They’ve suspended my email account that I’ve had for nearly 20 years Another reason why you should have your own domain and be independent from any services is that it can happen to anyone, never put your eggs in one basket.
- jmward01 2y agoIn order to maybe stop a few from engaging in acts that may harm people we actually harm many and accept it as collateral damage. It is doubly unfortunate that when it comes to Palestinians 'collateral damage' in all forms is acceptable for even the most trivial of potential gains.
- jmward01 2y agoAnyone know why this post is flagged? I get that there is an aspect of 'Most stories about politics' but at the same time the tech censorship angle here is high and likely in-line with 'Anything that good hackers would find interesting.'
- mandmandam 2y agoIt's flagged because dang didn't unflag it, ultimately. Which is concerning.
- muzani 2y agodang unflags a lot of these, but the conversation is rarely productive. I don't think it's a particular bias or attempt at censorship. But it's probably for the best. Once it's unblocked, it becomes a tug of war on both ends to flood the site with propaganda.
- jimmyjohn201 2y agoThis absolutely rocks. Buying at least 20k of MSFT tmrw.
- andsoitis 2y ago> can no longer access his bank accounts, which are tied to his Hotmail account, he says. Come on. This is such exaggeration. Surely he has contacted the banks (note: plural as per article) and he can access his accounts. Not even one? Banks routinely handle identification via phone to access your account and transact.
- imaginationra 2y agoOne of my banks uses email two factor auth- if I lost access to the email account and had no accessible backup email set I can see how being locked out of the email account would deny access to the bank account.
- DuckyC 2y agobut surely you can show up at your bank with identification and get the email changed?
- gorbachev 2y agoWhat if your bank account is at Monzo, or any other online-only bank that seem to be the fastest growing personal banking sector at the moment.
- Unbefleckt 2y agoLast I used one of those they wanted me to take a photo of myself with ID and I think record a video.
- iamacyborg 2y agoThis is a good reason why you should probably avoid neo-banks.
- viraptor 2y agoDepends how close your closest physical branch is. It may be hours away because of where you live. Or it may be a flight away because you're abroad.
- pgt 2y agoThis is why I have my own domain and control the MX records on the DNS on it, so that I can reroute email to a new email provider, if needed (I pay for Fastmail). Another nice thing about having a catch-all on own domain is that you can sign up to each service with a unique email address, e.g. <microsoft>@<your-domain.com>, which makes it easy to see if any services ever sold your address.
- psychoslave 2y agoYou can even put <hn-2024-07-11>@<some-domain.tld>. Let’s note however that even "owning a domain" is an illusion of control, as IANA is ultimately a retainer of uncle Sam. I don’t know if there is any functional distributed alternative that promote more autonomy to end users that can works out of the box (or even just a few basic install steps away) in most digital terminal out there.
- tamimio 2y ago> Let’s note however that even "owning a domain" is an illusion of control That’s not true. It’s definitely not complete control, but it’s far more “sovereign” and independent than having a user account with some corporation that can change its ToS overnight. To seize a domain, a lengthy legal process is needed. Not to mention, you can choose a domain that doesn’t fall under a specific country’s jurisdiction or choose a registrar company located in another country. For example, you can register a domain like .ch or .no, and a legal US order won’t be effective, especially if you didn’t use a US-based registrar. Furthermore, you can host your own domain name (1). It isn’t entirely safe, but the process and efforts to seize it are far more complicated than a click in an MS dashboard. Unless that person is doing something extremely illegal, no one will bother. (1) https://blog.technitium.com/2022/06/how-to-self-host-your-own-domain-name.html https://blog.technitium.com/2022/06/how-to-self-host-your-ow...
- dartos 2y agoDidn’t the US give up direct control of IANA years ago?
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- jimnotgym 2y agoThese companies want to become as ubiquitous as a public utility. Therefore they should be regulated like a public utility
- TomK32 2y agoEspecially if they don't give you access to you data (impossible in the EU thanks to the GDPR). They have to be taken to court for this.
- Y-bar 2y agoThe Digital Markets Act and/or Digital Services Act ought to have something to say about this, especially the "this secret decision is final and we refuse to say anything else" part of the story.
- bhouston 2y agoThat wording sounds like the decision was made in Israel and not the US. I would guess the shutdown requests came from Israeli security services. Thus it is final and not appealable and can also the reasoning can not be revealed.
- pjc50 2y agoHowever, if they've adversely affected an EU resident or even worse an EU national, the DMA forces them to allow an appeal and recourse.
- ghaff 2y agoI'm not familiar with what army the EU has to enforce that recourse. Ultimately, rights depend on the threat or actual application of force.
- ben_w 2y agoThe combined armies of every member state of the EU, if it came to that. Well before that point, they can just go through a normal court process because the EU has been empowered by the governments of each member state to write such legislation.
- bhouston 2y agoWas this decision made in Redmond or in Israel? Microsoft has offices in Israel and these offices are likely responsible for things happening in Israel, Gaza and the West Bank. Israel is currently at "war" with Gaza and having Israeli employees of Microsoft having the ability to disable anyone's account calling civilians in Gaza is pretty horrible. Is Microsoft via Skype and Hotmail participating in what Israel's leaders are call the "complete siege"? https://www.timesofisrael.com/liveblog_entry/defense-minister-announces-complete-siege-of-gaza-no-power-food-or-fuel/ https://www.timesofisrael.com/liveblog_entry/defense-ministe... No appeal and no explanation available does suggest to me the shutdown orders may have come from Israeli security services or the Israeli army.
- invalidname 2y agoIt has R&D centers and local business centers. Skype is not in Israel and there's no reason for a VoIP solution to route through a country local facility. The "complete siege" ended ages ago. Israel provides power, food etc.
- tripdub213 2y ago[dead]
- bhouston 2y agoIt isn't just Skype, their hotmail accounts were also disabled. Many local countries definitely do have authority over services provided in their countries. I would guess these shutdown orders came from Israeli security services and then were routed though Microsoft Israel to be enacted. > The "complete siege" ended ages ago. Israel provides power, food etc. Sure, whatever you say.
- exe34 2y ago[flagged]
- gl-prod 2y agoI don't know about power and food since I have friends in the North who still don't have access.
- buraktamturk 2y ago[flagged]
- nurbayzura 2y agoYour doamian come
- tyho 2y ago[flagged]
- imp0cat 2y ago[flagged]
- password54321 2y agoRead between the lines or jump to conclusions based on highly generalised preconceived beliefs about Palestinians?
- mach5 2y ago[flagged]
- saltserv 2y ago[dead]
- corsac 2y ago"Microsoft says they violated its terms of service - but will not say how - and the decision is final." I agree. Companies like Microsoft never do this to ordinary people.
- masalah 2y agoSuuuure
- masalah 2y agoDo you have any evidence for this doubt or just blanket racism?
- stefantalpalaru 2y ago[dead]
- nimbius 2y agoas of 2023 the US officially sanctions 26 countries. If we are to expect that for every phone call to one of these 26 untouchables we will receive holy retribution from the US corporate class, then im afraid sanctions have defeated the very west they were intended to empower. Microsoft has an infuriating habit of doing this; its not just a one-off. They routinely lockout international github users and feign innocent compliance when caught.
- jonathanstrange 2y agoIf you're in a country sanctioned by country X, then you shouldn't use products from companies in country X. It's common sense.
- piva00 2y ago> Microsoft has an infuriating habit of doing this; its not just a one-off. They routinely lockout international github users and feign innocent compliance when caught. Two Iranian co-workers have gone through some Kafkaesque bullshit with Github blocking them, even though both are living in Europe for more than a decade they got flagged and had their accounts suspended, taking months to re-activate them.
- saltserv 2y ago[dead]
- BenFranklin100 2y agoPay for Fastmail.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- heyheyhouhou 2y agoI've never felt comfortable using Microsoft, Google, Meta, etc products. In the recent months and with the increasing possibilities of surveillance with AI and how they are controlling the narrative of things, it made me feel incredibly uneasy. No more of these products on my devices.
- UrineSqueegee 2y ago[flagged]
- psychoslave 2y agoSo what? Do they pretend to filter all military and fraudulent uses on a equal basis with a public international ethical agenda openly shared and where every human out there is treated equally for the greatest good of all?
- jeromegv 2y agoImagine if they were closing accounts of families of Israelis living in the US because they called their family in Jerusalem. Would you make the same assumption?
- kazinator 2y ago[flagged]
- bhouston 2y ago> That's a 2004 way to reach people; nobody in their right mind uses Skype in 2024. Israel prevents anything better than 3G connectivity in the West Bank and Gaza for Palestinians, although I believe that Israeli settlers living admits them can use the latest and greatest tech: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/oct/30/israeli-restrictions-leave-palestinians-facing-digital-divide https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/oct/30/israeli-restri... Thus using old technology makes sense.
- gl-prod 2y agoYou would use anything that passes through Israel's blockade
- boesboes 2y agoAh yes, victim blaming. Always a great take!
- JohnMakin 2y agoIt's astounding to me people with takes like the one you are responding to can exist out there. I'm horrified and fascinated and want to know more. It seems almost reflexive.
- T3RMINATED 2y ago[dead]
- 29athrowaway 2y agoSome people forget that everyone is innocent until proven guilty.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- psychoslave 2y agoTypical sentence of people that are guilty, just like those who pretend they should be able to hide information outside of the protective gaze of the glorious all-powerful elites who know better than thouh. What are you trying to hide, you seditious terrorist, hmm?
- 29athrowaway 2y agoThere is a symmetry, an equation if you would prefer. On the left hand side you have rights, on the right hand side you have duties. Rights = Duties Your right of presumption of innocence is your duty to respect the presumption of innocence of others. If you break this symmetry, now we can look at YOU. Why should we all respect YOUR presumption of innocence if you don't respect others? If the response is some stereotype related crap I don't want to hear it.
- psychoslave 2y agoGiven your comment and the negative note of its parent, I'm wondering if its sarcastic nature was missed or if people interacting with it did got it was intended to be a caricature but were pissed of by its actual critic of state mass surveillance and its ridiculous "think of the children" pedonazis scarecrow. I don't buy duality as you present. Two points is just an invitation and opportunity to envision interpolations, extrapolate some spectral scales, wondering about additional dimensions, and fathom how it might interfere with the rest of our representations. Rights and left are just two points. Intimate mind experiences can modulate interpolations in-between. Duty and rights are all parts of the same object, it's just a matter of perspective that can make them appear to be separated consideration. Just like creation and constraints. Nothing exists without ontological restrictions that allows its form to happen.
- kibwen 2y agoIf technology becomes necessary to participate in society, and if we cede control of that technology to unaccountable dystopian hypercorporations like Microsoft, Google, and Apple, then we're setting ourselves up for disaster.
- zerkten 2y agoIt's worth pointing out that this same lockout situation can and has happened in many more cases than listed here. It happens that the timing coincides with a specific service use, but the problem of people getting locked out of their life because Google blocked access to their account is an old one. Unfortunately, your point will be forgotten by many once this episode passes, and we'll be back to ignoring how much control has been ceded.
- 6510 2y agoI get nothing positive or useful out of writing this comment but the negative potential is infinite. When the www started someone attempted to convince me that you should never interact using computers unless there is no other choice. Turns out he was right, you are not going to buy me beer, invite me, introduce me, collaborate or help me. The new contract is useless.
- kragen 2y agoyes. the only alternative i know of is free software and peer-to-peer networking on a cryptographically secure basis. unfortunately there isn't currently either a viable free software political movement or a viable cypherpunk political movement, so the near future looks very dark. perhaps after a few generations of hitherto unimaginable atrocities things might start to improve, but it is now too late to prevent those atrocities however, historically speaking, regimes of oppression have often been dismayingly stable, long outliving the states that establish them—consider that the traditional liberties eliminated by julius caesar in 049 bce, diocletian in the late third century, and constantine in the early fourth century were not regained until the late medieval or even modern era (the final end of the roman empire in 01453, the end of serfdom in the 13th through 19th centuries, the confederation of eight cantons in about 01315, the re-establishment of a senate in the us in 01789, the french revolution in 01799, etc.) federated systems like mastodon (or email) are a step in the right direction, but we need a decentralized system, without single points of failure, rather than just a federated one
- probably_wrong 2y agoIf you are in Europe and this happens to you, the GDPR gives you at least a partial solution: they don't have to give you your account back, but at least they have to provide you access to a backup of your data. NOYB has a list of what your rights are [1] and "My Data Done Right" [2] provides a handy tool for finding out who to contact and how. [1] https://noyb.eu/en/exercise-your-rights https://noyb.eu/en/exercise-your-rights [2] https://www.mydatadoneright.eu/ https://www.mydatadoneright.eu/
- dagaci 2y agoI've just read this https://medium.com/@notechforapartheid/a-marriage-made-in-hell-an-introduction-to-microsofts-complicity-in-apartheid-and-genocide-d7dfad65a196 https://medium.com/@notechforapartheid/a-marriage-made-in-he... For me the mass killing of children is completely unacceptable and there's absolutely no excuses, zero. And Microsoft's participation in that is a real shock for me.
- Jamie9912 2y ago[flagged]
- atlas_hugged 2y agoWow. This place just keeps going down hill. I feel like that meme of the little girl watching a house burn down.
- SSLy 2y agoFWIW the GP's "comment" got flagged to death
- some_random 2y agoUS gov tells companies that xyz groups are under sanctions (which is good, actually) and that they must put effort into preventing them from using their products (also good, actually). The problem is that they are punished for true negatives (in the press and potentially by the gov) but not for false positives (except for articles like this). The end result is overzealous bullshit that ends up hurting innocent people. For another example, the US gov told Paypal that they need to prevent transactions related to a weapon smuggling shell company "Tarigrade Limited" (which as I've said before, is good actually) but they implemented it to just block transactions and freeze accounts if "Tarigrade" is in the notes. Similarly, I know of a small store that sells patches that got their account frozen for some time because they released a patch with a firearm in it and had the gall to put the name of the firearm in the name of the product. https://www.vice.com/en/article/n7wg3w/paypal-tardigrade-error https://www.vice.com/en/article/n7wg3w/paypal-tardigrade-err...
- Nifty3929 2y agoYou get to an important issue: Type 1 vs Type 2 errors - precision vs recall. Any system is going to have errors, so what do you prioritize? The company has only limited control over this choice, as you also point out that the gov't will punish them for false negatives but not false positives. So the company prioritizes recall over precision. But you also imply that the gov't should punish BOTH types of errors, but I'm not sure that's fair. By extension it implies that the company should have a perfect system, with no errors of either type. That's not realistic, and a company should be punished for meeting an impossible goal. Better is for the government to just be explicit about it: we're requiring companies to employ broad sanctions, and even if some innocents get swept up, we think it's worth it to stop the bad guys. Or the verse, if that's the gov't decision.
- some_random 2y agoI'm not advocating for the gov to punish false positives, I don't know what exactly the issue is that's causing them, maybe incomplete information, maybe lack of resources, likely a combination of issues. Ultimately you're right though, there will be innocent people who are affected by sanctions
- atlas_hugged 2y agoAh yes, the corporate firewall of America, exported to all
- _pferreir_ 2y agoThis.
- jpcfl 2y agoIt is incredibly frustrating to realize that a lot of companies are within their right to deny you service as soon as you even _appear_ to pose a risk to them. Geico recently denied my renewal of insurance because they said their underwriters received notification that I use my vehicle for business. (I don't.) I have spent hours trying to explain to them that this is a mistake, but they have zero interest in providing me with insurance. I've heard this is common for people in CA. I'm not sure what legal recourse the people in this story have. Hopefully they have a legal right to at least download an archive of their data so they can recover old emails, attachments, photos, etc.
- casenmgreen 2y agoEvery time I read a story like this, about MS or Google or Twitter or which-ever big corporate it is, I'm so glad that I exited these platforms and years ago. I left LinkedIn before MS bought it, because it was clear it was being copied by all and sundry. I left GitHub once MS bought it (and I thank God for that, ever time I see another story about MS being awful). I never used Google - they were obviously evil and from quite early on. I may be completely wrong, but I think large companies are completely amoral. Not in a malicious way, but in a can't-be-anything-else kind of way; that is is an emergent property. All large organization have absolutely no moral sense, which is to say, doing things because they are ethical, regardless of costs or benefits, or possessing a capability to assess or modify their own actions on moral criteria. Complaining MS do these things is like complaining a cat jumps on a mouse. I'm not a fan of brutal mouse death, so I don't own a cat. What's critical of course is knowing this, and before deciding to buy into what these companies offer, rather than discovering it after buying into what these companies offer. And these companies will only tell you how wonderful their services are, and nothing about what they're up - nothing about how much and what data they collect, and what they do with it (give it to the State, sell it to all and sundry, with real-time updates included), or what's done with it (mandatory State mass interception).
- esbeeb 2y agoIt's interesting how no matter how much that we'd all like for technology to be this nice tidy domain of knowledge which doesn't intermingle in any messy way with philosophy or religion - where there is much less exactitude and clear boundaries - alas, this intermingling of morality comes around sooner or later. Morality/ethics/religion/philosophy can't help but come to bear on any and all technology, once it becomes widespread, systemic and seemingly "too big to fail."
- wincy 2y agoCurious, what sort of phone do you use?
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- WarOnPrivacy 2y agoI've spread my life around several email providers, including myself. I have at least 50 email accounts (inc pre-Microsoft Hotmail). In the last 10 years, I've lost access to ~5 accounts, usually when the provider axed their free offerings (is fine). In every case, I had warning and time to switch. If I lose access to one w/o warning, it would be a problem but not catastrophic. In short: What is the trivial solution to not risking sudden catastrophic loss of email? I don't think there is one. The answers are high-effort, high-maintenance. Technical ability can lessen that some. note: The reason I don't lean into self-hosted mail harder is spam filtering. I've hosted mail for small biz and have put many, many hours into reducing spam. On top of the usual edge solutions, I write scripts to help mitigate spam and malware campaigns. But the more visible my domain, the more anti-spam work is required and that state only ever ratchets one way.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- kkfx 2y agoAnother example of why we need FLOSS and open platforms, so instead of calling via Skype and maybe using Windows he/she use GNU/Linux and call via Ring or host a small GNU SIPWitch, and maybe also offer wireguard to hes/shes peers to reduce snooping. If such use of tech that already exists since decades became spread ALSO the giant will learn to be good citizens not "state-like entity" acting as bully.
- helpfulContrib 2y ago[dead]
- josefritzishere 2y agoWe live in a world where large corporations, FAANG companies in particular have greater money and resources than entire nations. This is not a situation with historicla paralel. But it's remained largely irrelevant militarily because those companies remaining neutral - like Switzerland. If they become politisized, and act on that alignment; it potentially openes up a whole new vector of military targets which are otherwise unthinkable. I don't like thinking about the future consequences on that trajectory.
- aristofun 2y ago[flagged]