Microsoft Privacy & Safety

Announcing New Series for Organizations: Data Governance for Privacy, Confidentiality and Compliance

2010-01-28T16:57:00Z

Today is Data Privacy Day and to celebrate, Microsoft is launching a series of whitepapers and webcasts titled A Guide to Data Governance for Privacy, Confidentiality and Compliance to help organizations create or expand a data governance initiative. Data governance is an approach for enabling organizations to more effectively manage, protect and use the growing volume of personal information, intellectual property and other confidential data. Specifically, it includes steps organizations can adopt...(read more)

Microsoft Releases a Study on Data Privacy Day

2010-01-27T05:14:00Z

Tomorrow marks the 4th annual Data Privacy Day (or ‘Data Protection Day’ in Europe) and Microsoft will be joining consumers, governments and organizations at events held in San Francisco , Washington D.C . and Brussels to support the increased awareness of online privacy. As people share more about their lives online through social networks, micro-blogging, photo sharing and other services, we at Microsoft see the issue of online privacy and control over personal data becoming a more important consideration....(read more)

Podcast: Integrating Privacy Practices into the Software Development Life Cycle

2009-12-22T22:51:00Z

This week Kim Howell , Director of Privacy Governance in the Microsoft Trustworthy Computing Group, and Ralph Hood Lead Program Manager for the Security Development Lifecycle (SDL) in Microsoft Trustworthy Computing Group. Participated in a podcast on “Integrating Privacy Practices into the Software Development Life Cycle,” with the Computer Emergency Readiness Team (CERT): Integrating Privacy Practices into the Software Development Life Cycle December 22, 2009 Featuring Ralph Hood Kim Howell and...(read more)

Microsoft Donates PhotoDNA to Fight Child Abuse

2009-12-21T17:45:00Z

From the Microsoft on the Issues Blog: Posted by Ernie Allen President & CEO, National Center for Missing and Exploited Children For most of us, the word “childhood” conjures up thoughts of innocence and security. But for thousands of children, it is shrouded by darkness and pain, because of the vilest kind of sexual abuse and exploitation. And when that abuse is recorded and shared online among pedophiles as child pornography, the abuse continues indefinitely; each time images of a child’s abuse...(read more)

Plagued by the Privacy Center? Learn how to remove it

2009-12-18T00:47:00Z

We recently received several e-mails to this blog like this: Why can I not get past the privacy Center screen so I can get to the settings? I want to disable this program. It is useless and it will not let me use my computer. It turns out there is a “scareware” program, aka rogue security software called “Privacy Center” that claims to be from Microsoft – it isn’t. Some victims of this nasty piece of malware have ended up on this blog trying to figure out how to get rid of it. Well, here are some...(read more)

Safer Online Shopping with Internet Explorer 8

2009-12-08T20:38:00Z

From the Microsoft Windows Blog : Yesterday was what is known as “Cyber Monday,” which is the first Monday after Black Friday every year and is one of the top online shopping days here in the United States. Cyber Monday is when people move to the Web to make purchases they missed in stores during Black Friday. And many online retailers offer hot deals similar to the in store deals seen on Black Friday. This year’s Cyber Monday was impressive - as of 1pm yesterday, sales for Cyber Monday were up 19.6%...(read more)

Microsoft and the FTC: A Continued Focus on Privacy

2009-12-08T20:36:00Z

From the Microsoft On The Issues Blog : Posted by David Bowermaster Administrator, Microsoft on the Issues The Federal Trade Commission’s roundtable series on “Exploring Privacy” begins today in Washington, D.C. Microsoft Associate General Counsel Mike Hintze is participating in the first panel of the day, entitled “Benefits and Risks of Collecting, Retaining and Using Consumer Data.” Links to a Webcast of the event and background materials are available here . The extensive public comments that...(read more)

Do and don’ts for p@$$w0rd$

2009-11-30T18:14:00Z

From the Microsoft Malware Protection Center Blog : Almost a year ago , we started a project designed to monitor incoming attacks against a normal user on a day-to-day basis. We presented you with details about the geographical area from where the attacks originated and what services were targeted, and we gave you just a hint about FTP dictionary-based attacks. Now we’re going into a bit more detail about the passwords, having so far gathered hundreds of user names and tens of thousands of passwords...(read more)

Identity Roadmap Presentation at PDC09

2009-11-24T19:21:00Z

Kim Cameron, the Chief Architect of Identity in the Identity and Security Division at Microsoft writes on his Identity Blog: Earlier this week I presented the Identity Keynote at the Microsoft Professional Developers Conference (PDC) in LA. The slide deck is here , and the video is here . After announcing the release of the Windows Identity Foundation (WIF) as an Extension to .NET, I brought forward three architect/engineers to discuss how claims had helped them solve their development problems....(read more)

Microsoft Bing Confims Commitment to Comprehensive Results

2009-11-24T19:18:00Z

From Adam Sohn on the Bing Blog : There’s been some buzz today based on a post by Nicholas D. Kristof at the New York Times suggesting that Bing filters results for searches conducted outside of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) using Simplified Chinese characters for their query. As Mr. Kristof reported over the summer, we did fix a bug in web search that addressed this issue. There are some queries that provide very balanced web results, for example 六四天安门 (June 4 th Tiananmen). We recognize...(read more)

The Week in Privacy - November 13 , 2009

2009-11-14T00:30:00Z

Social Networking Site Tagged Pays $500,000 to Settle Privacy Violations New York had accused Tagged.com of sending more than 60 million emails stating that friends had sent some photos, which in fact did not exist, and that recipients were told to sign up for Tagged.com to access them. The company would then use these contacts to send out more misleading emails. Big Companies Sign Draft Privacy Agreement at Conference in Madrid At an annual gathering of data protection officials in Madrid, attended...(read more)

Phishing – what is is, and how it relates to your webmail credentials

2009-11-13T23:52:00Z

The Windows Live team blogs writes : Thanks to coordinated efforts across the tech industry, and partnerships between industry players who are a part of the Anti-Phishing working group , over the years most web services, users and other applications have become smarter at spotting tricks like link manipulation, phone phishing, and forged websites. Cybercriminals have adapted to improved vigilance by focusing on the consumers as easier targets than battling technology. Unfortunately, even technologically...(read more)

Privacy in the Cloud Computing Era: A Microsoft Perspective

2009-11-05T13:46:00Z

Brendon Lynch here. Today we released a new position paper, Privacy in the Cloud Computing Era: A Microsoft Perspective . This new paper discusses how Microsoft is approaching privacy as it relates to cloud computing. We wrote this paper based on our experience over the past decade examining and addressing privacy challenges in the evolving online services realm. We are also releasing guidance to enterprises and consumers to help them navigate the privacy issues to consider when thinking about cloud-based...(read more)

Peter Cullen on Privacy Accountability

2009-11-04T22:23:00Z

Peter Cullen here. The concept of “accountability” has certainly become a recent catch-cry in the wake of the global economic crisis but it has long been an established principle of privacy and data protection. In fact, the concept was first established in data protection by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) back in the early 1980s and the principle of accountability is a core principle of the Canadian Data Protection Act (PIPEDA), the APEC Privacy Framework and is...(read more)

Statement by Peter Cullen on the Spanish Data Protection International Standards Proposal

2009-10-29T16:11:00Z

In the first week of November, hundreds of representatives from government, industry and civil society will be descending upon Madrid for the 31 st International Conference of Data Protection and Privacy Commissioners to discuss a range of issues related to privacy, security, emerging technologies and the changing nature of global data flows. Microsoft looks forward to engaging in this multi-stakeholder dialogue and will directly be involved in discussions around children’s privacy as well as safeguarding...(read more)