Outlook got updated on my iPhone last night and now they want me to agree to having my data shared with 807 partners.
Important note: I don’t use outlook as my primary email provider. I use Proton with a custom domain but I keep outlook for some old emails.
They did that before. They just didn’t tell you how many partners!
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Many apps share some data right at the start of the app though, before the consent form even pops up.
I wouldn’t be surprised if Outlook did that
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They want you to think that “to value it” in this context means “to have it in high steem”. When it’s more like “to put a price tag on it”.
Literally beyond parody
Reject All Button
At least there is one. Many apps don’t offer that at all but make us go through hundreds of options and turn them off manually.
Until an update makes you do it again.
And again.
The worst. Usually an uninstall for me.
Or they just break the site if you deny any/all.
Or they force to either accept all cookies or pay for a subscription.
Took a screenshot and rejected straight away.
Do you pay for email? If so this is wrong. If not, it’s how you pay for email.
Fair enough, they sell access to your eyeballs to their real customers, the advertisers.
But, what isn’t fair is that it’s 807 “partners”. This isn’t 807 different brands who might want to advertise to you, it’s far more than that. This is 807 different “partners” among whom are Google, Meta, ByteDance, Amazon, Alibaba, etc. who then each go on to sell access to their hundreds of thousands of advertisers.
You can’t expect to have a meaningful privacy policy when you’re sharing that data with 807 different entities.
The way I see it, they have us over a barrel. Unless there’s law on the books that says you can’t do that, your recourse is to pay for email or setup your own mail server. Good luck getting others to trust that though. I guess you could pay for a 3rd party cert.
I run my own mail server. It’s a pain in the ass and I don’t recommend it. But, trust isn’t really the issue, and the only certs I use are from Let’s Encrypt.
What about web hosting these days? Time was you’d get email as part of that deal, with your own custom domains. Have they farmed that out to services like Gmail etc?
I don’t know of any company that just runs mail servers. If you’re running your own mail server, you’re likely doing it on a small virtual instance. Adding web to that is easy. If you want a web frontend for email, there are plenty of options, although personally I just use IMAP.
I pay for it - family plan. The screen after this is about where I want my ads shown in the app…a paying customer shouldn’t be seeing ads.
Clearly you don’t pay ms enough so the poor megacorp have to sell your data to their 807 partners to scrape by.
Agreed. This is wrong.
the reject all button should atleast be normalized
atleast
Not a word.
be normalized
The default for sure.
Not a word.
So they missed the space bar, do you really need to be a douchenozzle about it?
If i see this kind of shit, 90% of the time their domain would just go into my browsers’ blocklist. It’s likely either riddled with ads, or hosts incorrect/incompletely information too
It’s not that they now changed something with data collection and sharing within the update. They always did it, all services free of charge do it and most that cost money likely take the extra money as well.
It’s now that they tell you in a short and informative way (1st sentence) and ask for your consent.
What’s really infuriating, are websites and services that have an “Accept All” button but no “Reject All”. Instead you have to manage individually and sometimes I have to flip 30 separate buttons to disable data sharing, where they even call advertisers a ‘necessary 3rd party’ requiring interaction on top.
There are extensions for that.
In Firefox Consent-o-matic and Ghostry both do a good job in android and Linux/Windows.
I have no idea if they have that on iOS though given Apple forces browser makers to reskin Webkit.
I did one once where it was like 400 toggles. Took me 10 minutes. I did it just to see how ridiculous it was. I don’t remember what site it was but I definitely never went back.
That was a loophole to the original GDPR. That’s now against the law in the EU, but bringing cases against all these sites is time consuming.
There is usually now a “reject all but essential” button. Well, it’s an improvement.
Now they need to make asking for ID to access or delete data illegal.
30? I’ve come across website that in this case would list out all 807 partners.
I always flip the 30 buttons and then accidentally click Accept All because it’s in the place that I would expect the Confirm My Choices button to be and I am tired of looking at all the buttons and don’t read the most important one. I always tell myself I’ll slow down next time, but I’m just trying to get to the stupid website to read whatever stupid link I clicked on so I’m impatient every time.
This is by design. It’s called dark patterns.
Yep and I hate it
They do this too by putting the reject all at the bottom. So insidious.
It’s been normalised for years, maybe decade. The only difference is that now they have to bother with telling you and asking for permission (which some still ignore completely).
Also, since we’re talking Outlook, some mail client send your credentials to their servers to improve your user experience by fetching mails on their end, meaning that not only data from your device are sent to whoever paid for them, but your actual mails are free for them to access without you ever knowing. The new outlook on desktop does that, but outlook is not the only one to do this.
We live in the greatest of times.
I wonder how many people haven’t realised that the new Mail/Outlook client, the one they’re pushing everyone towards in Windows, actually syncs all your mail to MS servers.
I have. Happily using Thunderbird now.
Yeah, Microsoft is trying to normalise the idea that your own personal email client should be open to them to access and steal your data so they can advertise at you.
Fuck windows and fuck outlook.
Thunderbird is free and entirely private on all platforms (And K9 mail on Android is also maintained by the Thunderbird team)
Full thunderbird for android when? 💔
I’m so glad I don’t have to rely on Microsoft products anymore. Windows completely went to shit after 7.
I haven’t. Mozilla Thunderbird FTW.
Also, I seem to recall my dad migrating to a new machine borking his email because of something like that. ( I didn’t catch the details. he was grumbly and growly in ways only a unix admin could be.)
“We value your privacy” in the same way my dog values a steak dipped in peanut butter.
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Lmao you’re personal info is getting a train ran on it 🤣 😂
It’s worse than that meme.
… You know the one.
You mean the girl with 5 black dudes
See, I told you that you knew the one.
If you said to someone “can you keep a secret” and they said “I value your privacy, I’ll only share your secret with 807 others”, I doubt you’d be telling them many secrets.
Might as well just get your secret printed on a billboard and hang it up in town.
I think that my record is just over 3000 legitimate partners
