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Microsoft

Palestinians Say Microsoft Unfairly Closing Their Accounts (bbc.co.uk) 184

Posted by BeauHD from the what-gives dept.
Ancient Slashdot reader Alain Williams writes: Palestinians living abroad have accused Microsoft of closing their email accounts without warning -- cutting them off from crucial online services. They say it has left them unable to access bank accounts and job offers -- and stopped them using Skype, which Microsoft owns, to contact relatives in war-torn Gaza. Microsoft says they violated its terms of service -- a claim they dispute. He also said being cut off from Skype was a huge blow for his family. The internet is frequently disrupted or switched off there because of the Israeli military campaign - and standard international calls are very expensive. [...] With a paid Skype subscription, it is possible to call mobiles in Gaza cheaply -- and while the internet is down -- so it has become a lifeline to many Palestinians.

Some of the people the BBC spoke to said they suspected they were wrongly thought to have ties to Hamas, which Israel is fighting, and is designated a terrorist organization by many countries. Microsoft did not respond directly when asked if suspected ties to Hamas were the reason for the accounts being shut. But a spokesperson said it did not block calls or ban users based on calling region or destination. "Blocking in Skype can occur in response to suspected fraudulent activity," they said, without elaborating.
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Palestinians Say Microsoft Unfairly Closing Their Accounts More

Palestinians Say Microsoft Unfairly Closing Their Accounts

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  • Don't want to hear (Score:2, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward

    a single person bitching about Ukraine. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]

    Since Israel's founding in 1948, it has received $158 billion in military aid from the United States, making it the greatest recipient in history

    • Re:Don't want to hear (Score:5, Insightful)

      by redmid17 ( 1217076 ) on Thursday July 11, 2024 @09:12PM (#64619983)
      And we've provided Egypt with 85 billion

      • Re: (Score:2, Troll)

        by Freischutz ( 4776131 )

        Since Israel's founding in 1948, it has received $158 billion in military aid from the United States, making it the greatest recipient in history

        And we've provided Egypt with 85 billion

        Yes, to keep peace between Egypt and Israel to ensure that one of, if not the most, important shipping routes in the world remains open. An awful lot of US aid to Israel and Egypt is aimed squarely at ensuring that there won't be another war that closes down the Suez canal. The rest of that aid flows largely due to Israel being the religious hobby project of many US Christian Zionists who vote for people who want to spend US taxpayer money on it.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by Luckyo ( 1726890 )

          >to ensure that one of, if not the most, important shipping routes in the world remains open.

          So by this logic, time to pay off Iran?

          • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

            by Freischutz ( 4776131 )

            >to ensure that one of, if not the most, important shipping routes in the world remains open.

            So by this logic, time to pay off Iran?

            Oh, the instant debate winning *what about Iran* Trump card. Well, the Americans tried that, it worked reasonably until 1978 when that effort fell apart with the Iranian revolution but this strategy has also undeniably worked pretty well in Egypt/Israel since the 1970s get them hooked on economic and military aid and pull the strings once in a while when they get rowdy. No strategy is perfect, and sometimes this one fails but on the whole the relative peace and prosperity that I, you and most of the rest of

            • Re: (Score:2)

              by Luckyo ( 1726890 )

              It's easy to tell someone who's information comes from pundits. They don't understand anything about reality or cause and effect. They just know talking points, which they mindlessly regurgitate.

              In this case, you referenced being able to bypass circumnavigating Africa by going through Mediterranean Sea, Suez Channel, Red Sea and Gulf of Aden. Supporters of Allah have de facto closed Red Sea exit. But you don't know anything about it, so when pointed out that Supporters of Allah have used Iranian anti-shippi

  • "Blocking in Skype can occur in response to suspected fraudulent activity," they said, without elaborating.

    All that means is we will block anyone for any reason including racism, sexism or we at Microsoft just plain don't like you. We will make up any reason including "you're committing fraud".

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by MeNeXT ( 200840 )

      That may be the case but the only phishing email I receive that are hard to block are DKIM signed and SPF validated from Outlook or Hotmail. I can't really say that Microsoft blocks anything on purpose.

    • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

      by NoWayNoShapeNoForm ( 7060585 )

      I guess you have never seen a sign that most bars, pubs, restaurants, and similar places have:

      We Reserve The Right To Refuse Service To Anyone

      Sounds like M$ is simply doing that with Skype and their email because they do not want to be even remotely connected to any possible support of Hamas.

      Or would you prefer that M$ and the 3-letter agencies snoop on your every email & phone call in order to verify that you are not supporting Hamas?

      Unfortunately our wish for a "middle ground" is denied by our inabi

      • Re:Lie, lie and lie some more (Score:4, Insightful)

        by UPi ( 137083 ) on Friday July 12, 2024 @01:13AM (#64620257) Homepage

        I am speaking of personal experience here.

        Unfortunately we only hear one side of this story, and even that through BBC's reporting, which has proven to be somewhat less than impartial. (BBC will cheerfully report figures released by the Hamas terror organization without so much as a tiny asterisk.)

        The fact is that people will lie about their persecution, misdeeds done to them and pose themselves as victims all the time. This is especially true if the same person feel discrimination and persecution, real or imaginary. The sad fact of the matter is that you cannot take any of it at face value: I have encountered sad complaints about how someone was mistreated by "Organization X" while later finding out that either none of it was true, or that it was true but "Organization X" had actually excellent reasons for sanctioning them.

        I'm not saying that Microsoft is impartial, but it is certainly more impartial than someone with the dramatic line "They killed my life online", or the BBC which just echoes it without an ounce of criticism.

        • I recall an image, I forget which news organization took the picture, but the American news magazine, Time had a story with that as the cover image, with no fact checking whatsoever.

          There was a picture of an old lady holding a handful of bullets, complete bullets, the case, topped by the actual projectile, and said that these were the actual bullets that her house had been shot up with...

          Time, clearly has no idea how a bullet works, and din't bother to ask anyone... the woman, she was clearly trying to

      • Re: (Score:3)

        by jd ( 1658 )

        This is why Common Carrier is so important. Providers should not snoop and should provide services without concern of rank or favour to all on a equal basis.

        It is for law enforcement to enforce laws, not Microsoft to collectively punish any ethnicity for the bad actors within it. Particularly as Microsoft is itself a bad actor.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by Luckyo ( 1726890 )

          Microsoft isn't delivering internet services in Gaza. Not sure how common carrier rules would apply here.

      • I guess you have never seen a sign that most bars, pubs, restaurants, and similar places have:

        We Reserve The Right To Refuse Service To Anyone

        Sounds like M$ is simply doing that with Skype and their email because they do not want to be even remotely connected to any possible support of Hamas.

        Or would you prefer that M$ and the 3-letter agencies snoop on your every email & phone call in order to verify that you are not supporting Hamas?

        (1) The US three letter agencies are already doing that on an industrial scale [wikipedia.org], (2) I wouldn't be surprised if all the Israeli intelligence agencies don't already have free access to this data as well, (3) All you have to do to earn the title 'Hamas supporter' and 'anti-Semite' is express the slightest doubts about anything the government of Israel does so it's not like they really need access to your emails and phone calls to award you these titles.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

        The right to refuse service is limited in most developed nations, e.g. you can't refuse to serve people on the basis of their race.

        Even if there is no legal issue here, it's still completely fair to criticise Microsoft for these choices. Even if Microsoft has decided that it won't support Hamas, relying on Israeli intel is unreasonable. They are claiming that 2 year olds are members of Hamas and demanding that they surrender: https://x.com/gazanotice/statu... [x.com]

        That's why it's actually impossible for Hamas to

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by sfcat ( 872532 )

          Israel considers basically every male in Gaza to be a member, so unless 50% of the population,

          No, no they don't. You are confusing two different things. Hamas refuses to use uniforms and uses child soldiers. This forces the IDF to check everyone which is this twisted into what you said. BTW, this is classic Marxist Propaganda techniques which were refined by the Soviets and passed on to Middle Eastern groups near the end of the cold war. There are intelligence training books from the Soviet archives that describe this exact situation.

      • what boggles me here is that I thought Whatsapp was the preferred communications tool of choice, I mean, all my European, Thai, and Australian friends prefer it. I thought Skype, since the purchase by M$, had been going down hill with its user base.
    • From recent experience changing IP addresses with various vpns, that is suspicious activity, for instance. Now there is likely much more. I'm going to surmise now its approximately like what a electronic payment processor service or just like credit cards. I don't recall much but I saw the basics of that setting up shops for clients at Paypay and Shopify, looked different in the control panels, but they had a geolocation feature, heuristical analysis some sort of "behavioural analysis"... it really localize

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Tyr07 ( 8900565 )

      Yeah, welcome to the cancel culture world. Not liking it? Don't pander to it anymore.

  • On one hand, stripping individuals, be they activists, supporters, or bystanders in a political dispute, of access to their communication and livelihood is abhorrent and totally in line with FAANG(M) corporate behavior. OTOH you're using hotmail. It's hard to do anything but apportion blame equally here.

  • Aren't there several alternative providers for a service like this if you need a VoIP-to-PSTN voice line, Google Voice being one? And with so many people being on smart phones anyway you can probably skip the land line number requirement and just use a SNS service with voice chat.

  • This is basically India declaring war on Pakistan.
  • Need to keep pictures and videos from leaving the scene of the crime. People might learn they are using shells and bombs specifically designed to maim civilians https://www.theguardian.com/wo... [theguardian.com]
    • The fact that we know of numerous genocides [wikipedia.org] throughout history is a direct result of documentation not stopping genocides.

    • Yes an effective way to keep all information from leaving a country is to close just the email accounts of a minuscule subset of persons outside the country associated with one specific email provider. That would definitely work for such a purpose.

      Definitely more likely than, given an area run by a terrorist organization with broad local support, that some people from that area have retained ties and have made communications which have flagged MS safety monitoring, or that MS is doing cleanup on accounts th

  • Big tech corporations like to paint themselves as champions of liberal values, but then they have no rules, show no transparency, enshrine themselves as gatekeepers and in general treat their cutomers like serfs. They can decide to stop providing vital services overnight without giving you any warning or explanation, let alone recourse options. When you have a problem, you find yourself alone against a faceless giant which might as well be run by robots as they provide no option for human communication.
    And

  • The overlords can cut you off (Score:3)

    by gweihir ( 88907 ) on Friday July 12, 2024 @04:29AM (#64620405)

    Anytime they want. This is just an example, and whether there is foul play on either siede is hard to determine. What is striking though is that MS can just close accounts without warning and that there does not seem to be any real appeal process. Hence MS can do this to basically anybody they dislike or they want to pressure into things. At least it is probably limited to personal accounts, enterprises will probably not look to kindly on their employees getting prevented from working. But it shows there is a lot if unchecked power and things like political manipulation and spying on users are not only easy to do for MS, they are very likely happening already.

    Incidentally, identifying targets for repression, manipulation and surveillance is probably one of the few things general LLMs can do well. There may be some connection to the current hype here.

    • Yeah, the cloud is someone else's server and it sucks.
    • I like to suggest another mostly unexplored issue. The scale of the customer base (hundreds of millions, or more) requires extensive automation to service. Anyone who's ever tried to contact Facebook, for instance, after a relative dies, to shut or freeze the account has run into this.* ((happened to me/my family, relative dies, then their account was hacked, and bad actors were shitposting, took over 6 months to resolve/get around the automation/contact the co)). So in the article there are several people

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by gweihir ( 88907 )

        I would suggest that with LLMs making the decisions, You can handle a much larger volume of requests, but the number of edge cases that result in false positives is probably rising.

        And I would agree with that suggestion.

        That is one reason why there currently is a complaint against OpenAI in the EU that it has to correct wrong statements about citizens. There really is no leeway, they have to do it. Obviously, they cannot and all can they offer is a filter. That probably is not going to cut it. It will be interesting to see how this plays out, because the GDPR does not allow them to be 99% right and for the rest, tough luck. They have to fix every single wrong one and they may well bec

    • Incidentally, identifying targets for repression, manipulation and surveillance is probably one of the few things general LLMs can do well. There may be some connection to the current hype here.

      That is actually very insightful. Most people don't realize that this is indeed a subject that "AI" aka LLMs can handle very very well.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by gweihir ( 88907 )

        Thanks!

        I also found it is a great assistance when preparing "Big Lie" type statements. For example, "how to I say 'we fucked up' in a positive way". It balked at "how do I say
        'mass murder' in a positive way" though, so Boeing and others still need to use people to make these statements.

  • They shouldn't be using Windows anyway. It's just thinly disguised spyware masquerading as an operating system.

  • Tough shit (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Baron_Yam ( 643147 )

    Palestinians have a right not to be killed by the IDF. They have a right to a place to call home. Israel has a right not to have people enter their territory regularly to commit mass murder with the stated intent of genocide.

    The Palestinians are the worse of the two groups - try being gay or Christian (or athiest) around Palestinians. Or liberal leaning.

    And the protestors? No time for them at all since 'pro-Palestininan' protests universally devolve into antisemitic hatefests attended by masked individu

  • Some guys with a laptops connected to Skype under personal accounts were probably using it like an Internet Cafe, allowing multiple people to make calls and charging them. MS probably figured out through usage it was a business, and blocked it.
    Never attribute to malice what can be explained by EULAs and simple greed.

  • Actually not surprised by the lack of Funny comments on this story. The Level 3 liars are much too strong with this one...

    So what are the odds for an actually insightful comment? Are the tabs beyond Funny even worth a click?

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