Microsoft bans nudity, swearing in Skype, emails, Office 365 docs

[HanaBi]

Fairly old news but worth repeating.

Microsoft has informed its customers of a major update in its Terms of Service agreement. One of the biggest bones of contention within this new agreement is the use of profanity on the majority of its product range, including Skype, Office365 and Outlook.com amongst others. Such excessive use - if reported - could well result in a ban or account suspension againt some or all of said products.

One concern is for those writing their own legitimate stories or novels online via Office365/MS Word. If such stories are shared online, and a subsequent complaint is made to Microsoft, then the author/user could face having his/her account suspended indefinitely.

Microsoft is keen to point out won't be moderating or monitoring these affected services, but will only react when alerted via a customer complaint. But again, there is some vagueness regarding the validity of the complaint (from trolls mostly).

Critics also suggest this is another step towards a Snooper's Charter and Big Brother, and yet another nail in the coffin for free speech.


The new agreement comes into effect 1st May 2018

What the @#$%&!? Microsoft bans nudity, swearing in Skype, emails, Office 365 docs

 

[Edward M. Grant]

Just another reason to avoid 'The Cloud'.

 

[thaddeus6th]

Just seems crackers to me. I don't use those services much (Open Office rather than Word) but it's rather puritanical.

 

[Montero]

Skype is my limit, but rather thought it was my business what I said on my phone call.
With further hhm. So, I can understand texts being stored for a least a bit, or rather being retrievable from one of the servers they transited, but a voice call? Because to look into a complaint they'd have to listen to a recording of a call.

 

[Edward M. Grant]

If I remember correctly, when Microsoft bought Skype, they changed the software so that, instead of sending calls direct from one computer to another, they were sent via Microsoft servers. I remember people saying at the time that they assumed the change was so the usual suspects could spy on those calls.

In fact, it may be a legal requirement in America, as I seem to remember the law requires that companies allow police to wiretap voice calls.

 

[HanaBi]

i think the old independent Skype used to be peer-to-peer, but now that MS has stuck its oar in, everything goes through them, no doubt at the pleasure of government and national security. in fact it wouldn't surprise me of enforcement agencies encouraged the likes of Microsoft, Facebook, Twitter, Google and Apple et al, to buy out smaller social media companies and absorb their technologies into their own, thus making tapping, bugging and general moderating far easier.