You may know that the more recent versions of Microsoft Outlook contain an encryption protocol.
What you may not know is that Microsoft has given master keys to the NSA.
I will reiterate this point: If you use cloud storage, you had better resign yourself to the point that the Feds can and will rummage through your files whenever it suits them, for they're probably collecting them.
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18 minutes ago
2 comments:
Actually, they're talking about Outlook.com, not Outlook. Microsoft has *not* given the master keys to the NSA, instead the NSA is exploiting a weakness of the EMAIL protocol being used, which is that while communications across the wire are encrypted, the messages must be decrypted and headers examined by the email server in order to figure out what the "next hop" of routing is supposed to be. If the next hop is Outlook.com, the message is then stored in plain text in your Outlook.com inbox. Which is, alas, *also* required by the standard email protocols.
So basically, email, period, is insecure unless you individually encrypt the bodies of your email messages with PGP. It isn't anything to do with Microsoft. It's the way the protocols were designed during the 1980's. The FBI has basically threatened Microsoft with putting Carnivore boxes on their network if they don't hand over whatever the NSA wants them to hand over, and Microsoft, rather than accept boxes that could be doing *anything* on their internal networks, gulped and handed over what was demanded. It is not something that Microsoft *wants* to be doing, but short of having their security guards get into a shootout with FBI agents come to install Carnivore boxes, they didn't have much choice -- and neither did every other email provider based in the United States.
- Badtux the Technology Penguin
I never trusted that "cloud" idea in the first place.
That is what thumb drives are for.
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