FW: [RUF] ATTENTION HOTMAIL USERS - O/T but important

["Kenneth Watt" <kennwatt@xxxxxxx>]

I came across this on another forum, and what it says is true. I just 
checked my account and had to change it. I don't how how they get 
away with this without notifying you. I thought I'd pass it on:

Microsoft Releases Your Personal Hotmail Info 

If you have a Hotmail account - or if you've used Microsoft Passport -
for more than a month, there's something you need to check. Or, more 
accurately, uncheck. Quickly. 

A small publication known as The Eastside Journal, based in Bellevue, 
Washington http://www.eastsidejournal.com/sited/story/html/92308
, 
reports that Microsoft has taken, uh, liberties with your 
confidential information. 

A bit of history. Microsoft bought Hotmail in January 1998. It's 
still the number-one location for free email: log on to 
www.hotmail.com ; and you can send and receive email messages at no 
charge. 

Almost 120,000,000 people use the system, worldwide. A couple of 
years ago, Microsoft hooked up Hotmail to its Passport system. 
Variously known as Microsoft Passport, Windows Passport, MSN 
Passport, and/or .NET Passport, all of the names refer to Microsoft's 
giant central database of customer information. 

If you want to use Hotmail, you have to sign up for a Passport - and 
in so doing you're added to the Passport database. Microsoft 
Messenger requires a Passport, too. Windows XP nags mercilessly, 
offering all sorts of goodies to get you to divulge your name, 
address, age, phone number, and the like, as grist for the Passport 
maw. 

If you signed up for Hotmail - or anything else that uses Passport - 
more than a couple of months ago, you may be in for a big surprise. 
It seems that Microsoft changed the rules while you weren't looking. 
Unilaterally, Microsoft may have granted itself permission to pass 
along your personal information to other companies that use Passport 
on their Web sites. The personal information includes your email 
address, your birthday, your country and zip code, your gender and 
occupation. 

Has Microsoft taken liberties with your data? There's an easy way to 
check. Go into Hotmail. Click Options (to the right of the tab that 
says "Address Book"). Personal Profile (in the upper left
corner). 
Scroll down to the bottom of the screen and see whether the boxes 
marked "Share my e-mail address" and "Share my other
registration 
information" have been checked. 

Those boxes didn't exist when I signed up for Hotmail, and chances 
are pretty good they didn't exist when you signed up for it, either. 
I certainly never gave Microsoft permission to hand out my email 
address - or my birthday, gender or occupation. I'd rather be dipped 
in oil. Yet both of those boxes on my personal profile were checked. 
I bet they're checked on your personal profile, too. 

Details are still murky, but it looks like Microsoft added those two 
check boxes a couple of months ago, and did itself a big favour by 
checking both of them for all of the Passport holders at the time. 

When did Microsoft implement this new policy? Hard to say. Details 
should be in the MS privacy statement, but I couldn't find anything. 
If you'd like to wade through Microsoft's privacy statement 
http://privacy.msn.com/default.asp#MSNMAIL
, strap on your hip 
waders - it's 520 lines of dense legalese.


Pass it on to anyone you know.
Mark.





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