“Microsoft has been entirely exonerated over the ghastly cock-up
that opened up the email of 50 million Hotmail users to all and
sundry. The exoneration comes in a secret report of an audit that
was carried out by a “big five accounting” firm which Microsoft
won’t name.”
“One might of course speculate that this is the sort of thing
that will torpedo industry attempts to self-regulate over privacy.
In the wake of the discovery of the Hotmail security hole Microsoft
and Web privacy overseer TRUSTe announced that Hotmail would
undergo a voluntary review by a major accounting firm, and that the
firm would not be named. Microsoft is one of TRUSTe’s major funding
sources, but then as Microsoft is a big software company, it would
be, wouldn’t it? TRUSTe also gets a lot from IBM and Novell…”
“Microsoft released what we have to take on trust as being the
report’s findings in a press release yesterday. “TRUSTe and
Microsoft have confirmed that Microsoft effectively resolved the
Hotmail security issue and that Microsoft is in compliance with the
TRUSTe licensing agreement. Microsoft also has implemented several
quality-control procedures to help prevent future incidents of this
kind.” What these are, and whether they apply to, say, IE5
(aka Security Hole Central), we know not.”