Joining other USA technology companies – including Google, Facebook, Yahoo and Twitter – Microsoft said that the change in policy was created to help users protect their data.
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“We already notify users if we believe their accounts have been targeted or compromised by a third party, and we provide guidance on measures users can take to keep their accounts secure”, writes Charney. “These notifications do not mean that Microsoft’s own systems have in any way been compromised”. Microsoft has just amended its policy for email platform Outlook.com and cloud based virtual storage platform OneDrive.
On Wednesday, after a series of requests for comment from Reuters, Microsoft said it would change its policy and in future tell its email customers when it suspects there has been a government hacking attempt.
An alert won’t necessarily mean your account has been compromised, only that someone has attempted to compromise it – and in the case of state-sponsored hacks, it’ll be able to tell you when there’s a potential hack going on, but not which government is doing it.
According to the other representative, as the threat landscape has evolved our approach has too, and we tend to now transcend notification and steerage to specify if we fairly believe the assaulter is state-sponsored. More importantly, it does mean that user should immediately increase the security settings on their accounts, reported Los Angeles Times. However, till date, users weren’t informed if the attack was most likely orchestrated by state-backed agencies.
Relying on testimony of former Microsoft employees, Reuters claimed that the attack was sponsored by China.
One more way to make sure that your personal data and accounts safe is so basic – be cautious of opening suspicious emails and both clicking on links and downloading attachments held alongside with it. This ploy is called as phishing campaigns, fake emails which serve as malware payloads on to victim machines or navigate users to malicious websites are strategy used to rob the credential and breach their systems and overall privacy.
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Microsoft said it had weighed several factors in its response, including that neither Microsoft nor the US government could identify the source of the attacks, which it said did not come from a single country.
