A BBC investigation reveals that Microsoft is permanently banning Palestinians in the U.S. and other countries who use Skype to call relatives in Gaza.
Reportedly, Microsoft has been banning and wiping the accounts of users who have leveraged Skype to contact relatives in Gaza. In some cases, email accounts over a decade old have been locked, destroying access to banking accounts, OneDrive storage, and beyond.
United States resident Salah Elsadi lost his account of over 15 years in the dragnet. “I’ve had this Hotmail for 15 years. They banned me for no reason, saying I have violated their terms — what terms? Tell me. I’ve filled out about 50 forms and called them many many times.” Eiad Hametto from Saudi Arabia echoed the report, “We are civilians with no political background who just wanted to check on our families. They’ve suspended my email account that I’ve had for nearly 20 years. It was connected to all my work. They killed my life online.”
Many of the users affected by the bans expressed that Microsoft may be falsely labelling them as Hamas
Use matrix.
Matrix originating from israel does sketch me out a bit since they are famous for spyware. Do source code reviews check out?
What else should we use?
Signal is decently rated. it is still a little more centralized than Matrix but that also makes setup easier. I’m not a cybersecurity guy though so I have no idea what’s actually good and what’s not, I just go by recommendation from people on the interwebs.
It’s fully end-to-end encrypted by default, and it also encrypts and minimizes metadata. It’s also completely free & open source, and I don’t think they have ever terminated an account for any reason other than spam. These are the things that actually matter.
Damn, thats some google level behavior.
What the fuck, MIcrosoft.
What the fuck, MIcrosoft.
Ok, honest question. Are you surprised?
If it was any other company I would be. But it’s Microsoft.
Yes.
I’m no microsoft fanboy, but I am shocked that they would do this. Everyone should be shocked. To be anything but shocked is to be complacent.
This is the kind of shit google does on the regular, Never heard of Microsoft doing anything like this before.
And as I’ve said in response to instances of google doing this, I’ll say it again here. This continues to highlight the dangers of having all your eggs in one companies basket, by choosing comfort and convenience you’ve given your entire digital life over to a company that has no compunctions against metaphorically guillotining it for any reason they want.
Yeah what are people going to do when Google starts banning accounts for using ad blockers?
That’s probably when I’ll finish de-Googling entirely.
All of these are a shit stain from the same asshole of corporate USA
No, it’s standard corp level behavior that’s beholden to government censorship and propaganda when it doesn’t fit the narrative. You can substitute any big tech company in the US for Google. They all do this. It’s why the government is not a fan of TikTok, they don’t have that same level of control over the flow of information.
that and it is quite literally spyware that sends all the consumer data to the CCP where they can adjust their own algorithms to show things that can sway the minds of people too young to think critically
The hell do you think the data from American companies goes‽ Snowden literally told us the US govt is doing the same thing…not saying they should, just asking where is the outrage that we’re being spied on by our own government… It’s plenty there when we’re being spied on by China… And quite frankly I feel like China can do a lot less to me than home can.
they can adjust their own algorithms to show things that can sway the minds of people too young to think critically
Ironic. You’re literally commenting on companies adjusting their algorithm to create a narrative and censor something your government doesn’t like.
Think critically next time. You’re not smart as you think you are.
it is quite literally spyware
So are Facebook and Instagram, which are apparently not a problem. Remember Cambridge Analytica?
where they can adjust their own algorithms to show things that can sway the minds of people too young to think critically
Every social media platform does this for maximum retention
to the CCP
What’s the CCP gonna do with it that’s worse than what Western companies do with it?
deleted by creator
So what you’re saying is, that there is now an easy way to delete your MS account?
i am sure that only affects the data YOU can ever access, but never the data already stored for later abuse ;-)
Remember: today it’s “just” the Palestinians and you may not be affected or care. But tomorrow, it could be you.
First they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out—because I was not a socialist. Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out—because I was not a trade unionist. Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out—because I was not a Jew. Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me. —Martin NiemöllerYep. If you ever shared a political opinion, that could put you on someone’s naughty list. If that someone gets a position of power and decides they want to attack, well, you could be the next metaphorical Palestinian.
Voting on Lemmy isn’t private (and is probably for sale on closed platforms) so just upvoting an opinion might be enough to get you on some lists.
Downvoted your comment just to be safe
Man, messed up innit. & how could it be made private without enabling a whole different set of bad actors (astroturfers, marketers, political axe grinders)
I have always been pro-privacy, but in a kind of lukewarm, “I wish someone would do something about this” way.
What has finally pushed me to ditch services from large corporations over the past couple of years is not really a concern for privacy, its a drive for self-sufficiency.
As basically the last stepping stone, as of a couple of weeks ago, my email, calendar and contacts are self-hosted, and it’s just… So freeing.
I don’t understand why it’s so mainstream to equate Palestine with Hamas. It’s as if there is an actual conspiracy going on to to support this genocide. Is it because it’s so easy to say you’re antiemetic if you oppose “the Jews”?
Basically we spent 20 years fighting “terrorists”. So now it’s really easy to paint one side or the other as the “terrorists”. And thanks to Islamophobia pushed by mainstream TV shows and Movies, if you get painted as a “terrorist” then everyone in your country is also a “terrorist”.
The word is in quotes because very few of the groups fought by regular forces (regular infantry as opposed to special operations) were actually international militant NGOs like Al Qaeda. Mostly they were local militias mad at the coalition forces for their own reasons, like “Why did you kill my kid in an airstrike!?!”, or “I like the Taliban because they pay me really good for the poppy you torched. Also, you torched my livelihood in a country that has no safeguards against starving to death.” And even the Taliban, ridiculously evil bastards that they are, were never an AQ like group. They were concerned solely with taking back Afghanistan.
All of this nuance was lost on anyone who didn’t read the actual reports coming out of these countries though and many of those reports were classified. So all most people got was their favorite action and/or police drama shoveling the idea that all muslims are terrorists. With a side of Fox News villifying any brown people they could find.
So now, Israel walks in, sees all this, screams “terrorist!” and shoots the nearest Gazan kid. Predictable results were predicted many times by academic scholars.
It’s completely normalized racism. America has been institutionalizing Islamophobia for years to justify their invasions of the Middle East where we kill millions of
innocent civilians“terorrists”Before the 2000’s a lot of that manufactured hate was directed towards Asians because we needed to justify war crimes in Japan, Korea, Vietnam, Laos etc.
Early in 2001, the commission presented a report to the incoming G.W. Bush administration warning that terrorism would be the nation’s greatest national security problem, and saying that unless the United States took proper protective measures a terrorist attack was likely within its borders. Neither the president nor the vice president nor any other senior official from the new administration took time to meet with the commission members or hear about their findings.
The commission had 14 members, split 7-7, Republican and Democrat, as is de rigeur for bodies of this type. Today Hart told me that in the first few meetings, commission members would go around the room and volunteer their ideas about the nation’s greatest vulnerabilities, most urgent needs, and so on.
At the first meeting, one Republican woman on the commission said that the overwhelming threat was from China. Sooner or later the U.S. would end up in a military showdown with the Chinese Communists. There was no avoiding it, and we would only make ourselves weaker by waiting. No one else spoke up in support.
The same thing happened at the second meeting – discussion from other commissioners about terrorism, nuclear proliferation, anarchy of failed states, etc, and then this one woman warning about the looming Chinese menace. And the third meeting too. Perhaps more.
Finally, in frustration, this woman left the commission.
“Her name was Lynne Cheney,” Hart said. “I am convinced that if it had not been for 9/11, we would be in a military showdown with China today.” Not because of what China was doing, threatening, or intending, he made clear, but because of the assumptions the Administration brought with it when taking office. (My impression is that Chinese leaders know this too, which is why there are relatively few complaints from China about the Iraq war. They know that it got the U.S. off China’s back!)
So what you’re saying is: Lynne Cheney has been wrong for 23 years so far.
Plenty of folks on here have bought into the China Boogeyman narrative. Her family’s propaganda has been devastatingly effective. We likely will be at war with China in another generation, given our current trajectory.
China isn’t blameless. Factory and camp narratives aside, their naval actions are bellicose.
their naval actions are bellicose
The atrocities that western nations have had to commit to keep a foothold in places like Osaka, the Philippines, Indonesia, Pakistan, and India really disqualify any of these folks from claiming another country is “bellicose”. We’re still out in Oceania committing genocides of native peoples, to this day.
That’s before you get into some belly-aching about a Chinese warship sailing through the Straight of Taiwan, as though its not American property.
Hahaha. First of all this is old, there’s not any bases in Afghanistan anymore. Second, this is the same propaganda Russia runs with about NATO. They do belligerent stuff and then complain when their neighbors ask the country with a bigger stick for protection. Also, did someone include HK in this graphic? I know there’s lots of US bases in the Pacific, but I think someone is gilding the lily.
But also no, it’s not just about sailing a ship through Taiwanese waters. We do the same thing to China all the time, just to remind them that under international law that’s okay.
It’s conducting war games that completely surround Taiwan.
It’s claiming a ridiculous area for it’s EEZ, far larger than international law allows and completely disregarding any potential EEZ for other countries in the area.
It’s sinking fishing vessels in international water
It’s hacking the government systems of it’s neighbors
The list goes on…
Why would China engage in military conflict with the USA when they can just sit back and watch the USA collapse on its own?
I don’t understand the overarching point of this comment.
Military Industrial Complex needs to be fed.
Without America the Palestine people would have starved to death years ago. Their own Arabian brothers won’t even help them. America doesn’t need to institionalize islamaphobia when they do it themselves. You can look into any Islam media and you would find they actively burn u.s. flags on state media and call for our destruction. Nothing was needed to justify your made up war crimes in any of those countries because they all started the wars. Japan bombed pearl harbor. North Korea invaded South Korea. Vietnam Gulf of tonkin. Etc etc.
Lol fuck off with that hard angle, also the Gulf of Tonkin was a false flag.
Haha that was funny. Mentioning the Gulf of Tonkin incident as justification for war and really meaning it
The fun thing with Tonkin is it doesn’t even need to be a false flag, it can credibly be explained by a bad radar return. I don’t know which is is a worse basis to get 400,000 Americans Killed? (Including Agent Orange and Suicide numbers)
Without America, Palestine would be united and free by now. A single multicultural country from the river to the sea that can recognize and celebrate its diverse people and history. Instead though we have a genocidal European colony.
LO-fuckin-L at using Gulf of Tonkin, a well known false flag operation meant solely to draw the US into a protracted conflict we had no business being in. 🤡
I mean sure maybe the August 4th incident was overblown but the August 2nd 1964 incident did happen where our ship was attacked by Vietnam torpedo boats. Maybe you get attacked and don’t do shit at all about it who is the real clown there?
Right?! Could you imagine if some country attacked one of our naval ships and we didn’t do anything about it?
Hold on, I need my popcorn for this!
The 6 day Israel-Arab war. A casualty was encourred and Israel pleaded it was an accidental casualty of war. They made concessions.
The gulf of tonkin. Not a casualty but a calculated attack.
Ohhhh got it, only one false flag attack was committed by the US. That means the war in Vietnam was justified.
To be clear regarding “false flag” operations for anyone unaware: this entails attacking our own military in order to provide spurious cassus belli to enter a conflict we had no valid reason to enter. In this case, a civil war on the other side of the planet, in a bay we should never have been in to begin with.
How stupid does a person need to be to think that, not only was the war in Vietnam justified, but that the Gulf of Tonkin false flag incident is that justification?
Vietnam torpedo boats attacked our ship on August 2 1964. Deny that fact as much as you want. Our ship was in international waters when attacked. There were multiple justifications to get in that war I don’t really care to get into them. Tldr: We help our allies and protect democracy in the region.
We help our allies and protect democracy in the region.
LMAO. Your military protects interests of the billionaires and their economy. It has fuck all to do about democracy.
But keep guzzling whatever you already are, those braincells aren’t going to repeat propaganda by itself.
🤡 👟👟
Without America the Palestine people would have starved to death years ago. Their own Arabian brothers won’t even help them.
Iran won’t help Palestine, but also Iran is the shadowy hand behind Hamas.
Egypt won’t help Palestine, but the CIA/MI5 need to coup the elected government every decade or three when it gets to Muslim Brotherhood-y.
Lebanon won’t help Palestine, but Israel says there are tunnels into Gaza from Lebanon so they need to start bombing again.
Turkyie won’t help Palestine, but the IDF had to murder Turkish aid workers in 2010 to prevent their aid flotilla from reaching the shore.
So Palestinians are Hamas?
Why is Iran not helping Fatah?
Their support of Hamas is on ideological grounds. Similarly to Qatar’s reason for funding Hamas. Israel is holy waqf land that belongs to Muslims and should be cleansed from Jews.
Russia is also helping them out with weapons.Even when Egypt had sovereignty over Gaza they made sure to prevent Palestinians from going to Egypt.
Tunnels from Lebanon… to Gaza…? Where’d you read that?
Hezbollah begun bombing Israel in support of Hamas. They’re also funded by Iran (much more than Hamas though).
Meanwhile Palestinians live in camps in Lebanon. Some of those walled and surrounded by watchtowers.
They have less rights there than anyone else (including refugees and migrant workers), despite living there for 3 generations at this point.Turkey under Erdogan has been mostly hosting Hamas leaders while bombing Kurds in Syria.
I don’t think much needs to be said about Assad.
The only country in the area which actually helped Palestinians was Jordan. Although that also changed for a while after Black September.
Most of UNRWA’s funding over the years has come from the EU and USA.
Israel is holy waqf land that belongs to Muslims and should be cleansed from Jews.
That’s crazy because I’ve heard Israelis assert the exact opposite.
Most of UNRWA’s funding over the years has come from the EU and USA.
There’s a certain dramatic irony in funding UNRWA, paying Israel to bomb UNRWA, and then claiming you’re the only folks providing aid to Palestinians.
That’s crazy because I’ve heard Israelis assert the exact opposite.
Yes, religious extremists exist also in Israel.
There’s a certain dramatic irony in funding UNRWA, paying Israel to bomb UNRWA, and then claiming you’re the only folks providing aid to Palestinians.
I’m not the one who wrote USA is the only one providing aid.
What you quoted is the reality. The bulk of the funding over the years has been from the USA and the EU.
He’s really bad at sarcasm. He’s trying to point out the inconsistencies.
Iran won’t help Palestine, but also Iran is the shadowy hand behind Hamas.
Your point being what? That they fund Hamas so they’re helping?
Egypt won’t help Palestine, but the CIA/MI5 need to coup the elected government every decade or three when it gets to Muslim Brotherhood-y.
Somehow Egypt helps them by having secret govt backed coups? Instead they could have just taken in refugees but why would they do that? They’ll just have a coup instead.
Lebanon won’t help Palestine, but Israel says there are tunnels into Gaza from Lebanon so they need to start bombing again.
So Lebanon helps the Palestine people by building tunnels where Hamas stored weapons and hostages?
Turkyie
I recall the Turkish police raiding those same charity offices accusing them of being linked to Islamic terrorists.
You heard it here first folks, war crimes don’t exist if they burn your flag!
You can look into any Islam media and you would find they actively burn u.s. flags on state media and call for our destruction.
Well yes. Do you have any idea how much US neo-colonialism has harmed the Middle East over the past 70 years? Your country supports ISIS for fuck’s sake go touch some grass.
Also why do you think their Muslim brothers won’t help them? Surely not because most of the Arab world is run by American puppets.
Do you ignore the majority of Palestinians support Hamas? It’s factual reality the majority of Palestinians democratically voted and elected Hamas which ran on a destroy Israel agenda. In reality they asked and started this war due to that election. It’s not because it’s so easy to say they are antisemitic it’s because it is factually correct to say it.
Every sentence in your comment is another israeli propaganda lie. None of them are factually correct. Congrats on a new Hasbara record.
From river to sea, right? They can’t even make it past the river though.
So all Americans are dickheads because Trump won democratically in 2016?
What if you changed that statement to all conservatives instead of all Americans? Because not all conservatives support Trump or voted for him in 2016. But he is now representative of them.
Like. Hamas wouldn’t exist without the actions of Israel. And that is exactly why so many Palestinians have thrown their support behind Hamas. But that doesn’t mean Palestinians, Hamas, or even conservative Americans are a monolith.
The point is rather that the group is being labeled in such a way to discredit efforts to give Palestinians the human rights everyone should have. It’s the same thing that happened with the Black Community in the US and the black Panthers. This has been a thing for centuries with just about every grass roots or guerilla militia in existence. At some point if you buck the ruling classes power, you become a target and the propaganda follows.
This guy answered “what would you do?” with “enthusiastically support the Nazis”
Do you ignore the majority of Palestinians support Hamas?
Imagine supporting the only viable resistance organization when you’re subjected to a slow-burn genocide. The humanity!
They didn’t actually support Hamas in 2023, until Israel bombed them into the stone age and supported shifted. Which is the same phenomenon we’ve seen in every war with a massive bombing campaign since 1936. They did vote democratically, and that vote was blocked by Israel and the US. The platform though was a moderate one in which they drew a line between Israel and people. They very much want to destroy the country but they believe they can live with the people as long as there’s not an apartheid power structure. A line they still have in their doctrine today, a line people like you blithely ignore. Also that election was nearly 20 years ago. Are you admitting that Hamas and Israel were already at war? Usually the party line is there was peace and doves and olive trees until the barbarous Hamas blew it all up. And the people in Hamas are also semites. They are literally semites.
I don’t understand why it’s so mainstream to equate Palestine with Hamas
Decades of Islamophobic propaganda combined with a strong American economic interest in Israel might have played a role.
Many Palestinian protests have people cosplaying Hamas and waving Hamas flags.
Hanging out with people that like to dress up as a member of a group that wants to kill Jews makes someone a little antisemitic I think.
Denying that there’s an antisemitism problem in the Palestinian movement doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist. In fact that’s the sort of attitude that allows it to persist.
Denying that there’s an antisemitism problem in the Palestinian movement doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist.
Uh… Did you expect them to not be antisemitic? I mean it’s not a good thing but what other outcome did you expect from 75 years of Apartheid and genocide?
That aside, Hamas is the only viable resistance group in Palestine, other than maybe PIJ (which is more extremist). What do you expect them to do?
Please point to where the anti Israeli movement hates All Arab and Hebrew speakers?
Jews are not the only semites and yes everything I’ve seen in the US is directed at the country, not the people.
Jews are not the only semites
Okay this only really works as a gotcha. It doesn’t do anything to address the point being made. That aside,
Please point to where the anti Israeli movement hates All Arab and Hebrew speakers?
I misread their comment and thought they were talking about Palestinian resistance in Palestine, not the worldwide Anti-Zionist movement so nevermind anything I said up there.
I don’t understand why it’s so mainstream to equate Palestine with Hamas.
Because the mainstream is unironically ignorant of the true political and social state of Palestinian society. They don’t realise that Hamas is an extremist Palestinian political party, while the actual moderate Palestinian faction worthy of support is the Palestinian Liberation Organisation. Show them this Wikipedia page of the ongoing civil war among Palestinians and you’d get cricket noises from the average perpetually online mainstream.
Gaza is controlled by the Hamas, while the West Bank is controlled by PLO/Fatah. But no one in the mainstream in the Twiterrati, Facebook and other social media will know that, because they get junk food information from fake news and propaganda or their own bubble in those social platforms.
The PLO was voted out in Gaza because they were nothing but Israeli puppets. They actually lost the entire election, but Israel and the US blocked Hamas from taking control of the government in West Bank too. And now there’s this narrative that Hamas violently seized power without acknowledging that there was an election and the result was not honored without that seizure.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
Today, BBC News put out an investigation having spoke to 20 Palestinians living abroad who claim Microsoft has permanently banned them from their systems for calling relatives in Gaza.
Skype might have fallen out of favor for general messaging purposes over platforms like WhatsApp and Telegram, but it remains an affordable service for calling cell phones directly via the web.
Many of the users affected by the bans expressed that Microsoft may be falsely labelling them as Hamas, the terror group behind the notorious October 7 massacre that killed hundreds of concert goers near Re’im in Israel.
Microsoft declined to respond to the accusation, but claimed that it doesn’t block calls or ban users based on geographical location.
“Blocking in Skype can occur in response to suspected fraudulent activity,” a Microsoft spokesperson told the BBC — potentially implying there’s more to the story.
But given how much of our online life is basically handed over to big corporations like Microsoft, who are under no obligation to guarantee access to these services, it is alarming how they can just ban you with no real explanation or transparency.
The original article contains 647 words, the summary contains 186 words. Saved 71%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!
This is what I fear the most with these platforms. They have these shitty automated moderation systems that can just decide to delete everything you have there on a whim. Already common on places like youtube and facebook, but it just keeps getting worse. Every site is pushing users into signing in with their google/microsoft/whatever accounts.
Remember the guy who lost access to his smart home when amazon banned him for no reason?
It isn’t even on a whim. They get pressured to act on “anti semitism” and define that to mean anything that offends Zionists.
The ADL is usually responsible.
Not under their new owner, since he’s the one that pushed for the definition change in the first place, among many other blatantly biased changes to the ADL in the past decade.
The ADL has always been like this. Remember when they defended Apartheid?
well it wasn’t for no reason, it was for stupid reason, which is different, but i agree with your sentiment.
if you are depending on a platform where you are the goods being sold, not the customer, you shouldn’t be surprised if you are taken of the shelf on a moment’s notice.
everyone has a choice.
I use Gmail, and am concerned about the same thing. But of the alternatives I don’t know any that have wide support for social logins, which are damn convient.
it doesn’t have to be clean cut.
i have my personal and important mails in my private mailbox, on my own domain. i use gmail as a backup and spam mail, i use it everywhere where i assume the mail can go to some spam database sooner or later.
so if i lost access to it one day, i would lose history of some confirmations from various eshops and shit like that, but nothing that would really cripple me.
i would definitely not put my family photos there and hope they stay there forever.
which are damn convient
and that’s how they get us…
Look into zero knowledge email providers
well it wasn’t for no reason, it was for stupid reason, which is different
Yeah, guess I ovesimplified a bit. For anyone not aware, it was one report of racism towards a delivery driver.
The accusation was completely false, though even if the guy actually were a racist pos, remotely disabling devices he paid for and owns is not a good road to go on.
Yeah, guess I ovesimplified a bit. For anyone not aware, it was one report of racism towards a delivery driver.
ok, that doesn’t even make sense, but it shows how wildly different and random the “reasons” can be.
i was thinking about the case where guy took a photo of some rash on his son’s penis to send it to a doctor and some automated system flagged it as child pornography.
EFF: Google’s Scans of Private Photos Led to False Accusations of Child Abuse
Based on NYT reporting: A Dad Took Photos of His Naked Toddler for the Doctor. Google Flagged Him as a Criminal.
Wild. Obviously I want treatment for all the sick people abusing kids but that automated flagging was not the way.
Google Photos: showing your son’s penis rash to underpaid randos but calling the cops on you
underpaid randos
while you are technically correct, i would refrain from disrespecting these poor people.
Facebook content moderators in Kenya call the work ‘torture.’ Their lawsuit may ripple worldwide
By EVELYNE MUSAMBI and CARA ANNA Published 9:52 AM GMT+2, June 29, 2023
NAIROBI, Kenya (AP) — On the verge of tears, Nathan Nkunzimana recalled watching a video of a child being molested and another of a woman being killed.
Eight hours a day, his job as a content moderator for a Facebook contractor required him to look at horrors so the world wouldn’t have to. Some overwhelmed colleagues would scream or cry, he said.
https://www.wired.com/story/meta-kenya-lawsuit-outsourcing-content-moderation/
I remember that story. Thanks for that perspective - certainly, no disrespect is intended. In the context of people who should ever see your child in the nude, social media company employees are strangers which I used a synonym for. Strangers who aren’t paid enough for what they do. “Underpaid randos” sounds OK at the moment but I’ll sleep on it.
no disrespect is intended
i didn’t mean to accuse of anything, it is just morbidly interesting how many layers there are to this modern dystopia we are being lured into right now.
before reading that story, i wouldn’t give content moderators second thought as well.
It’s all to stop terrorism!
So much bs in the name of justice is just laziness
don’t ever forget that microsoft is evil
Just capitalism playing along with genocide - no different than they did seven decades ago.
As if I needed another reason to hate Microsoft.
better do not hate, just make them irrelevant for yourself.
NOT hating is good for health and not depend on abusers is good for you too ;-)
Time to build federated alternatives.
To email? Has being possible to host your own email server for decades. Don’t need to over complicate it with federation, also what would that even look like?
No, Skype.
Email is the original federated social network.
Guess that officially adds Microsoft to the BDS list? Unless it’s already on the list.
BDS?
Boycott Divest Sanction
Good luck? They effectively have a monopoly on large portions of the market.
Have to start somewhere, for example, instead of throwing a Microsoft based PC at your kids to do their school work, have them use Linux. Phase Microsoft products out of your homes/lives.
Fuck Microsoft and al Big Tech corporations
Friendly reminder to not use freemail accounts (Hotmail, Gmail, Yahoo, etc) for anything important. It’s very hard to get any sort of support as your account is seen as low-priority.
FastMail and MXRoute are good options. MXRoute has good Black Friday sales and all their plans include unlimited email address and domains (you’re just limited by total disk space).
Microsoft’s paid plan is decent too. $70/year for a personal account or $100/year for a family account (up to 6 people) and it includes the Office suite, 1TB cloud storage, and email.
Why would I give Microsoft money if they’re behaving like this?
That’s a reasonable question.
A lot of people are already paying Microsoft, either for OneDrive space or for Office. In that case, you may as well use what you’re already paying for. They’re also much more likely to provide support if you’re a paying customer.
I wasn’t saying to give Microsoft money, I was just saying that their paid plans are good value, particularly in the case where you need Office.
In this article Microsoft is locking out paid customers. Which does make a good case for them.
Ah, I didn’t realise it affected paid custokers Thanks for the info.
Having used the web version of Office at my job, I know I would not pay for it. It is compatible-ish, but severely lacking in features, enough so that I don’t trust it to render properly or maintain the formatting entered using the desktop app. If that is good enough then there are lots of alternatives.
Some sites and services won’t accept accounts with e-mails outside of the mainstream ones though.
Doubt. Which sites?
AllYouPlay and another online game store wouldn’t let me register with a protonmail address
Apologies for doubt. That’s absolutely bizarre.
This is largely an issue with top level domains. Things outside of .com/.org/.net tend to get flagged as non-viable email addresses, because it doesn’t fit the specific “*@*.com” format that the site has programmed their scripts to look for.
i’m using my own domain for mails for 15 years now and never had any problems. and i sign up on a bunch of sites
same. I see outrage-obsessed people constantly talk about how using a custom domain or (gasp) running your own mail server is internet suicide and literally impossible because your addresses won’t be seen as real or your mail will never get delivered by anyone. I’ve been doing both for over a decade with no trouble whatsoever, so I wonder how badly these folks are botching their mail setup to be getting that treatment.
I run my own email server, but I use an outbound SMTP relay so that my email get delivered. It’s very very difficult to get emails from ‘new’ self-hosted mail servers into the inbox of Outlook/Hotmail users, unless you own the whole /24 IPv4 range used to send the emails, and can guarantee it won’t become anywhere close to spammy.
Since you’ve been hosting yours for a while, Microsoft might have it marked as ‘trusted’. It takes a while to get to that point though - you need to send them quite a few emails, and users need to not mark them as spam.
Do you have an example? That’d block pretty much every business customer, including paid Google and Microsoft users (as the paid accounts use a custom domain). I’m not sure which sites and services would want to block all business users like that.
Also, FastMail is definitely mainstream. It’s pretty popular and has been around for 25 years.
It’s at least common on forums as bots love making accounts with non-megacorp email addresses on PhpBB and MyBB forums. Typically, there aren’t people signing up the same services with business emails as personal ones, so if ones expecting not to be used by businesses want to fight spam, it’s generally pretty effective and consequence-free to block email providers not known to have effective anti-bot measures built in.
Fastmail is the shit. I feel it’s really underrated. Everyone on Lemmy just knows about Proton.
MXRoute looks awesome! I just switch one domain to them to try.They have a lifetime plan right now that looks nice.
I was eager to replace the email bundled with my registrar. Speaking of, could you recommend a registrar that has a similar experience to these?
I have most of my domains at Porkbun.
Or if you have a little more money, there’s the Proton pass which comes with VPN, Email, Drive, Calendar, and Password Manager. All protected under swiss privacy laws. They have a free tier of their drive with 5GB storage so you can collaborate on other people’s documents without needing to pay yourself, and they have a $120/yr US Tier for 500GB for 1 person, and a $288/year US Tier for 3TB for up to 6 people. If you don’t need that much storage and don’t care about anything other than the email, they have a 15GB plan with just email and calendar for only $48/yr US.
This is not an ad, I am a real person with no connection to Proton except a deep respect for their business, and an even deeper hatred for Microsoft
I think Proton is a good choice. I’ve heard good things about them.
For me personally, I’d be worried about putting all my eggs in one basket. For example, I like having my password manager (Bitwarden) entirely separate from everything else. I know that’s not how the general population thinks though, so I think all-in-one solutions like Proton (and also Microsoft’s and Google’s paid suites) definitely have their place.
Do Proton have a larger plan with just email and calendar?
I think I’d rather have proton be my password manager than anyone else out there, and then take advantage of the other services they offer with it. Unless I wanted to keep my password manager entirely offline, which is far more secure but far less convenient
Probably the first time they have paid attention to Skype.
