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.
↫ Mohamed Shalaby and Joe Tidy at the BBC
Checking up on your family members to see if they survived another day of an ongoing genocide doesn’t seem like something that should be violating any terms of any services, but that’s just me.
Oh, what’s your definition of genocide and who’s committing it? How would you act if your close relative had been kidnapped and held hostage in a dark tunnel without Red Cross access for nine months? Just keep having parties at home?
Rubuntu,
Ok, but if you look at which regime has caused more death and suffering by the numbers, you cannot really make the case that it’s only the Palestinians. As a pacifist, I hate using one violent atrocity to justify more heartbreaking atrocities. This attitude only creates a perpetual cycle of human suffering. Catching those responsible is one thing, but the indiscriminate attacks, bombings, famine are creating new generations of victims who had no responsibility for the Oct attack.
I feel for all the victims in this damn conflict. I worry that this may be too divisive an issue for osnews. There is too much “your either with us or your against us” bullshit and it risks breaking down community relationships and good will. I don’t want that to happen here.
“Which regime has caused more death and suffering by the numbers.”
If only there’s no 7/10 massacre plus ~200 hostages, I’m pretty sure that regime won’t be doing what they’re doing now. Oh, and remember that some of those hostages still not returned –pretext for ‘that regime’ to do what they do..
“..creating new generations of victims who had no responsibility for the Oct attack.”
Oh, don’t be to sure that everyone else (beside Hamas) wasn’t responsible for 7/10 or the kidnappings. Just watch the videos. Or read the poll “% of Palestinians support October 7 attacks by Hamas.”
There’s too much hate there. And their combined forces is what spiraling them to destruction.
tonnys,
Hamas have said they have lost track of the hostages. That this is plausible highlights just how messed up gaza is right now. Some of the hostages have been murdered by IDF too, Things are so messed up.
2/3rds of deaths have been children. That a government sanctioned force would do that and continue to do it for so long without corrective action it is deplorable. Far too many of these deaths have been senseless and all the deaths regardless of nationality show the worst of humanity.
There are people who genuinely want peace. The tragedy of it is that when innocent people become victims, it turns them into future aggressors. This has been such a prominent aspect of the middle east conflict and yet people who should know better are actively exploiting the hatred for politics, pouring gas on the flames. As irresponsible as it is, hatred is an easy platform to run on, easier than peace.
Setting aside the whole question of whom is the genocider and whom is the genocidee — If I was living in a tunnel and trying to shoot and kill others while avoiding being bombed and shot and killed myself, the last thing I would want would be a Microsoft email account. Talk about total lack of privacy. Emailing to your comrade on a Microsoft account, “Let’s meet in tunnel 9A in 30 minutes for some lunch” probably means getting a cruise missile in your earhole. So, I guess you could say that Microsoft closing their accounts is a feature, not a bug.
Personal perspective aside, a close relative != genocide. Not for a second am I condoning any of the atrocities committed by Hamas, but again, to use programming parlance, Hamas != Gaza.
No one said anything about Hamas. Is it your position that all Palestinians are responsible for October 7?
Not all, but some? The people of Gaza voted for Hamas, and you will not be able to find even one poll that shows that they would vote differently if elections were held today. Also, the vast majority of Palestinians in Gaza and in the West Bank say they support the actions of Hamas on October 7th. Would have a wonderful would to live in if this wasn’t the case, but unfortunately it is.
Anthill4991,
The last vote was 18 years ago, and it wasn’t a majority.
https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2023/10/was-hamas-elected-to-govern-gaza-george-w-bush-2006-palestinian-election.html
It helps to have some context.
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-67695861
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i43WrOwwgpQ
Violence begets more hatred, and hatred begets more violence. Meanwhile both regimes are using violence to further their agendas and neither of the regimes want peace.. I believe that most people would actually want peace given a true choice, but on the ground such a choice has been systematically deprived from them.
The context around this is everything. Were the family members they were emailing and skyping members of Hamas, for example. An organisation that’s classified as a terrorist one.
Were the services being used to fund members of Hamas? Skype, for example, has a send money function.
Each of these would be legitimate reasons to shut an account. But we have None of that information to make an informed assessment.
We are all dependant on cloud based services now, it’s alarming. I could sit here and rant about MS shutting Skype somewhere, busy punching some code using AI tools that are probably 100% dependant on Google, all the while asking my associates for advice through Meta. In the background Youtube is keeping me up to date on it’s versions of what is important.
Picking one to complain about is at best arbitrary, at worst negligent!
This shows again, that you need to host your own. If companies can take your critical infrastructure away without juridical process, you cannot and should not rely on it.
Kretikus,
I host my own, and I’m more than happy to help others do so as well. I am a big fan reducing our dependencies on a few giant internet companies, but honestly it’s gotten harder to be independent over the years. You can’t host email at home because you will likely be blocked from doing so. You can rent a server or VPS, but when you are too insignificant the big providers still won’t help resolve delivery issues even if the problem is on their end. The war on spam has created innocent casualties and the little guys running their own email servers may find themselves netblocked because their neighbors got a larger range of IPs blacklisted. When this happens your poor email server may be screwed. On the other side of things you have to worry about incoming spam. I use realtime DNS blacklists, which is a godsend, but some spam still gets through. Sometimes the spam comes from google’s servers, but you can’t do much about it because we can’t block google’s user base while still having a useful email server.
I’d like for us all to become more decentralized on the internet, but my honest opinion is that this isn’t going to happen. The dominant companies that control the technology don’t want it happen and ordinary consumers are never going to start demanding it.
Alfman,
you are right, hosting your own is work and it needs skill to keep it properly running. Most people are not willing to do that.
However, there is an alternative by buying your own domain name and have a managed hosting at a smaller domain provider. Since you are a paying customer, it is harder for them to shut you down.
Your comment made me think… If google closed my gmail account for some reason, like using an adblocker, I’d certainly lose contact with tens of clients who send me work once in every while.
Gosh, I really need to do something about this.
I’m still baffled by the fact that people are using “free” email providers like gmail for anything remotely important. It can be taken away from you on a whim, just like it did from my partner and then she found out why I’m paying for my email.
It doesn’t even have to be genocide. Google terminated accounts of people who ordered Pixel phones but received empty boxes because they were stolen by FedEx contractors. Those customers did chargebacks on their credit card when they couldn’t get support and found that Google terminated their entire accounts. Years of history, purchases, contacts, emails, gone.
Never put your eggs in one basket. Don’t use a one-stop shop. The companies are friendly to you as long as it is favorable for them to be that way. Today’s Proton is tomorrow’s Google, who is the Microsoft of yesterday, etc.
Use computing platforms that don’t force you to use their cloud provider for basic access like logging in.
NO THANKS.
Well said.
unix_joe,
“Couldn’t get support” from google…so relatable!
I haven’t researched this, but do you have any links? Is this allowed by google’s terms of service? It not. Retribution against users might be illegal and against credit card terms, not that I’d favor the odds of the little guy.
“Disturbing news comes from Russia, where preparations are underway to organize a new and much more brutal version of the migration crisis. Poland is to be on its route. As former employees of the Belarusian secret services inform Forsal, the operation is to begin at the beginning of August. We talked to our sources and they confirm that some of these Palestinians are invited to be sent to Poland . Because who will check who is from Hamas and who is not? – says Aliksandr Azrau.” (Google Translate)
https://forsal.pl/kraj/bezpieczenstwo/artykuly/9544222,bialoruski-oficer-ostrzega-polske-przed-nowa-bronia-rosji-atak-juz-w.html
I’ve… got… to… side… with… Microsoft?
Look, politics aside, the fact is there’s always going to be people caught in the crossfire with any conflict. What is Microsoft expected to do here? Let potential terrorists use their resources, possibly earning them international condemnation when it gets out some bombing was planned using Teams? It’s also unfortunately true that bad actors will often claim to have good intentions or use coded language, which makes identifying the legitimate users basically impossible. It sucks. It’s genuinely rough. Even in a professional setting it can be hard to say “my email was suspended, here’s a new one” because it might imply you were associated with bad actors.
During war communication is ALWAYS one of the first things to be impeded. Be it cut phone lines, jamming, or even physical messengers, everyone using that stuff is impacted. That’s the reality. Do we have to like it? No. I hate hearing this stuff. But we also can’t pretend like the reasons for this aren’t very understandable.
Kver,
I’d say it depends on how strong the evidence really is. The reason I have my doubts is because it’s quite likely that microsoft are getting their information from the IDF. But given that the IDF keeps getting caught in lies about their attacks on gaza, they could be lying to microsoft too. “We conducted a surgical strike against insurgents”, meanwhile the victims were children murdered in cold blood while playing in the street leaving relatives to pick up the body parts. Or “we thought we were under attack”, meanwhile video taken at the scene shows people were coming out holding white flags above their heads. Or “we attacked an enemy convoy”, which turns out were doctors on a humanitarian mission in a property marked vehicles that had coordinated safe passage with the IDF. There are so many documented cases and it happens over and over and over and over again. So while I realize microsoft may be in a tough spot – it would be so easy for someone to accuse microsoft of “supporting the terrorists”. It’s much easier and safer for microsoft just to terminate the accounts, whether the labels are factually true or not. Obviously I’m not privy to anything behold closed doors, but just given what we do know about the IDF, protecting the rights of the Palestinian people isn’t really a priority, even the innocent. They are all expendable.
Alfman,
The main issue is that there is no transparency, nor any means to appeal.
Granted, they might not want to “leak” their process, however if civil rights are being infringed, then the bar should be higher than “someone gave us a list”.
sukru,
I agree with you, but just as a PR matter it may be easier for microsoft to shut down accounts regardless of allegations being true or not. I don’t even know if the palestinians have any legal rights here?
It is usually the “contagion”
You have a relative in Gaza under siege. You say something stupid, and marked up / banned by the system.
Then anyone who contacts you is marked.
And then those who contact them, and so on.
And then there is this:
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/03/19/us/supreme-court-no-fly-list.html
sukru,
This reminds me of the red scare in the US, where there was a witch hunt in hollywood for communists. Everyone was incentivized to out their neighbors “here’s the deal, we won’t prosecute you if you give us names…” Of course this probably lead to many false accusations.
Without an account, all I see is the headline. Bah.
Sorry about that,
This could be a more reliable source:
https://www.aclu.org/press-releases/aclu-cheers-supreme-court-decision-to-allow-no-fly-list-challenge-to-continue
Hmm.
On the one hand you wouldn’t want dangerous people on flights, but on the other hand determining “danger” through profiling clearly results in innocent people on the list through no fault of their own. There needs to be some accountability so I agree with the decision in this case.
Yes,
Use pre-emptive measures, profiling, whatnot. Sometimes, in rare cases, due process might be slow for a real threat.
But there needs to be accountability, a quick resolution, plus a restitution (monetary award) when found innocent.
XD Good one!