Index

Microsoft Bumps into the Law Again

They are Having Trouble Bulldozing the GDPR

Microsoft and the various legal systems they operate under have had a long and rocky road. They have repeatedly found themselves on the wrong end of court decisions throughout their history. Wikipedia’s survey article on the subject goes back over twenty years. The article leaves out Microsoft’s involvement in the SCO-Linux issue, putting it in a separate article. Linux people with long memories like myself have never forgotten that one, though.

Now the DSK in Germany has decided that:

On September 22, 2020, the DSK had commissioned an assessment by the Administration Working Group on the use of the cloud service Microsoft Office 365 (now: Microsoft 365) and the Online Service Terms (OST) and the Data Protection Provisions for Microsoft Online Services (Data Processing Addendum / DPA) - in each case as at: January 2020 - with regard to compliance with the requirements of Article 28 (3) of the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) taken note of. The assessment by AK Verwaltung at that time came to the conclusion “that, on the basis of these documents, it was not possible to use Microsoft Office 365 in a manner that complies with data protection requirements.”
– Translated with www.DeepL.com/Translator (free version)

After translating and reading through more of that document, it looks like the DSK worked with Microsoft long and hard to remedy what it saw as clear and obvious issues with Microsoft’s handling of the user data. Microsoft did not fix its problems through the end of 2022.

With the newer American regulations starting to take effect, particularly the California Consumer Privacy Act and the beginnings of other state and federal action on the same issues, I wonder how long Microsoft can legally keep taking people’s data. They have a long history of bulldozing their opposition with hundreds of lawyers and millions in legal budget, so even California may have problems forcing compliance.

The biggest question, though, is why anyone would use (and pay money for) Micro$haft’s notoriously buggy and insecure crapware in the first place. There are less buggy and more secure free alternatives in the Linux world, including Linux itself, so why is Microsoft worth even a nickel?