31–40 of 117 posts
(The first sentence of that article is: "The central German state of Hesse’s local Data Protection Authority (DPA) has banned the use of Microsoft 365 in its schools")
Good call, I'm using a software firewall on Windows and the number of unnecessary requests it makes for gaming services, widgets I haven't used once and telemetry is surreal
In what universe do they need to be collecting data from kids, especially that which cannot be kept locally.
Telemetry data (which I suggest is reasonable that they collect) can be stored in local 'log' style DBs. It's not data they need to repatriate.
Although for login and identity management, it might be reasonable to have that quasi centralized for security reasons. While MS could afford to build for each country, almost no other companies could.
Finally, we need to be wary folks: this is ultimately a kind of regulatory capture.
I'm already working with small startups that are struggling with this - they have customers unwilling to have their data stored in other countries and it's a giant problem.
MS and G can afford to deal with it, startups, not so much.
Edit: Gosh I wonder if that's an PaaS opportunity right there, aka 'transparent nationally stored data' ...
Meanwhile, Polish gov't uses Microsoft Teams [1] as one of ways of verifying citizens who are applying for trusted profile service. [1] - https://moj.gov.pl/uslugi/engine/ng/index?xFormsAppName=Wnio... (in Polish)
In Spain they use Zoom for the same thing. It's really astonishing how governments, especially the European ones, don't cluster on open-source and self-hosted resources for all of these things. To be honest, I know the "easy answer" to this: "IT consulting firms, incompetence, bureaucracy and corruption", but even with that, it should be possible to do it with open system and not just rely on some other countries eve…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
That's 6.5 % of available memory of a computer with 8 GB of RAM.
You make it sound like it's fine for an application that has network i/o in the few KB and miniscule UI refreshes when idle to consume that amount?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Neoliberalism is super entrenched here. It is almost impossible to create a state/county/municipal IT department that would actually have enough sysadmins. All such departments rely almost entirely on external suppliers. One way this happens are salary controls. It is impossible to hire someone and give him the market rate, but it is trivial to tender the work associated with such position to a random external compan…
> Only software that someone actively sells can ever make it through. Only software that someone actively supports*
What a clickbaity headline. It's just about one state, and only for schools. (The first sentence of that article is: "The central German state of Hesse’s local Data Protection Authority (DPA) has banned the use of Microsoft 365 in its schools")
But on the whole i'd say its warranted. Because these judgements are precedents which bind other DPA's.
The scope of the factual findings is broad enough to say that it affects any business using 365 handling personal data. That leaves only the question of legality in the specific case. Which depends on the presence and kind of personal data present in 365.
MSFT should be leading the way. In what universe do they need to be collecting data from kids, especially that which cannot be kept locally. Telemetry data (which I suggest is reasonable that they collect) can be stored in local 'log' style DBs. It's not data they need to repatriate. Although for login and identity management, it might be reasonable to have that quasi centralized for security reasons. While MS could…