Bonum Certa Men Certa

Microsoft's Latest Assault on Privacy

Steve Ballmer



Summary: Microsoft is selling "political campaigns the ability to target voters online with tailored ads using names, ZIP codes, and other registration information," based on a report

When Microsoft took over Yahoo it passed into it some former Microsoft executives, who now help run the company from the inside, not just from the outside. It's a bit like (Open)SUSE as Microsoft's pet in Azure, helping Microsoft control GNU/Linux. We are not too shocked to discover some of Microsoft's reckless record on privacy being shared with Yahoo. To quote:



According to a report Microsoft and its partner Yahoo! are selling "political campaigns the ability to target voters online with tailored ads using names, ZIP codes, and other registration information that users provide when they sign up for free e-mail and other services."

Google has stated clearly that they do not offer this kind of political matching service.


Microsoft and its buddy Facebook love to smear Google over "privacy" claims (they even hire AstroTurfers to do this). To counter the lies one should keep the above in mind. Privacy and Free software are symbiotic (decentralisation necessitates weaker logging).

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