SAN FRANCISCO
Microsoft has said it is scrambling Outlook e-mail messages in transit to thwart spying by governments or others.
Toughened
encryption at Outlook and Microsoft OneDrive online "cloud" data
storage service came less than a month after the technology titan got
low marks in a Google ranking of such defences against online snooping.
"We
are in the midst of a comprehensive engineering effort to strengthen
encryption across our networks and services," Microsoft vice president
of trustworthy computing security Matt Thomlinson said in a blog post.
"This
effort also helps us reinforce that governments use appropriate legal
processes, not technical brute force, if they want access to that data."
CHECK INTEGRITY
US
Internet firms are eager to fend off privacy concerns provoked by US
online spying tactics exposed by former intelligence agency contractor
Edward Snowden, who has taken refuge in Russia.
Microsoft
also announced the opening of a transparency centre at its Redmond,
Washington, headquarters where governments can check the integrity of
its software.
Google in June stepped up its effort to
make it tougher for spies or anyone else to snoop on e-mail, unveiling
Chrome browser software for scrambling digital messages.
A
test version of a software tool called "End-to-End" was released so
Internet engineers can dabble with making mini-programs that plug into
the Chrome browser and encrypt Gmail messages in ways that shield them
from the eyes of everyone except senders and recipients.
In a move that put pressure on other services, Google broke down how much message traffic received from them was encrypted.
No comments:
Post a Comment