Microsoft is doing damage control after the company reportedly went through a private Hotmail account to see if a former employee was leaking Windows code.
The company has vowed not to go through a customer's email again, instead contacting the authorities if a threat is suspected, Brad Smith, the company's general counsel, said in a blog post published on Friday.
Microsoft has faced criticism from media and privacy advocates after the incident involving former Microsoft employee Alex Kibkalo, who was arrested on Monday for allegedly stealing and leaking Windows code, NBC News reported.
Kibkalo is suspected of sending the information to an unnamed blogger, and Microsoft allegedly rifled through the blogger's Hotmail account to see if the code had been leaked.
According to Smith, Microsoft has been in talks with privacy advocates and will be taking "an additional step" to ensure that its users feel safe.
"Effective immediately, if we receive information indicating that someone is using our services to traffic in stolen intellectual or physical property from Microsoft, we will not inspect a customer's private content ourselves," Smith wrote in the post. "Instead, we will refer the matter to law enforcement if further action is required."
Even though Microsoft supposedly won't be looking through private emails again, Smith emphasized the company's right to do so in the earlier case, saying that "our own search was clearly within our legal rights."
He did acknowledge the need for user privacy and put the incident into the context of the NSA revelations of last summer.
"We've entered a "post-Snowden era" in which people rightly focus on the ways others use their personal information," Smith wrote. In the future, instead of inspecting emails, Microsoft "should turn to law enforcement and their legal procedures."
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