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Microsoft gets legal cover to protect against users' potential privacy infringements

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ANI Washington

Microsoft has reportedly decided to deploy two legal teams to approve of its email reading capabilities, following a court document revealing that the company read the email of a third-party Hotmail blogger to uncover an internal leak.

The software maker has brought changes to policies regarding how it searches user data that is part of its own network of services.

According to Tech Crunch, keeping in view that Microsoft cannot get a court order to search itself as none is needed, it has instead decided to add layers of protection between it and its own users' data.

It has decided to deploy a second legal team apart from the 'internal investigating team' to vet the need for the data search and a former federal judge would review the case.

 

The company would review the case and grant a decision and only execute a search into, say, an Outlook.com account if the retired judge consents that there is 'evidence sufficient for a court order.'

Microsoft would also publish periodic transparency reports about the number of these searches that have been conducted and the number of customer accounts that have been affected, the report added.

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First Published: Mar 22 2014 | 3:07 PM IST

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