Microsoft amends its terms of service to prevent peeking into customers’ emails, even though it suspects they’re stealing from the corporate.

Microsoft said this can honor its privacy commitments to its customers, even those it suspects can be thieves.

In a blog post Friday, Microsoft executive VP and general counsel Brad Smith said that the corporate has reflected at the criticism it received over the way it handled a 2012 case wherein its investigators accessed the Hotmail account of a blogger purported to have received stolen Windows code from a disgruntled employee. Due to internal conversations and input from advocacy groups, Microsoft has decided that its privacy promises also needs to be binding by itself employees and agents.

“Effective immediately, if we receive information indicating that somebody is using our services to traffic in stolen intellectual or physical property from Microsoft, we can’t inspect a customer’s private content ourselves. Instead, we are able to refer the problem to law enforcement if further action is needed,” said Smith.

[Say hello to the privacy revolution. Read March Madness: Online Privacy Edition.]

Smith said Microsoft will incorporate this variation into its terms of service to elucidate its commitment to customers and to make it binding.

Over the past week, Microsoft have been the objective of withering criticism from privacy advocates who mentioned the hypocrisy of Microsoft’s Scroogled ad campaign — which takes Google to task for using algorithms to read Gmail messages to focus on ads — in light of its own behavior. While many acknowledged that Microsoft might have been within its rights to access a customer account outside of standard legal processes, they said it was a stupid thing to do as a result of damage done to the company’s image.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation suggested in a blog post last week that Microsoft’s decision to access the Hotmail user’s account might qualify as a contravention of the Electronic Communications Privacy Act (ECPA). Smith maintains Microsoft’s actions were lawful.

The advocacy group said that Microsoft’s insistence that its terms of service allow such action is itself worrying because such a lot of possible actions could violate its code of conduct, thereby granting the corporate access. The EFF noted that merely linking to a Peanuts cartoon will be enough to justify a suspension of user privacy “because Snoopy is eternally pantsless, and Microsoft specifically prohibits links to ‘nudity in non-human forms including cartoons.'”

Microsoft’s critics took time to praise the corporate for reversing its stance. “Microsoft’s legal team (and their privacy team who were all in favour of discussions) deserve serious praise for this modification in policy,” said Christopher Soghoian, principal technologist on the ACLU, via Twitter. “Bravo.”

“While our own search was clearly within our legal rights, it kind of feels apparent that we should always apply an identical principle and place confidence in formal legal processes for our own investigations involving people that we suspect are stealing from us,” said Smith. “Therefore, instead of inspect the non-public content of shoppers ourselves in these instances, we should always turn to law enforcement and their legal procedures.”

Now the question is whether or not Google and other companies that store customer data will join Microsoft in rejecting the special privileges written into their terms of service contracts.

The NSA leak showed that one rogue insider can do massive damage. Use these three steps to maintain your information safe from internal threats. Also within the Stop Data Leaks issue of Dark Reading: Technology is significant, but corporate culture also plays a central role in stopping a gigantic breach. (Free registration required.)

Thomas Claburn was writing about business and technology since 1996, for publications comparable to New Architect, PC Computing, InformationWeek, Salon, Wired, and Ziff Davis Smart Business. Before that, he worked in film and tv, having earned a not particularly useful … View Full Bio

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