Palestinians calling home to Gaza on Skype have had their digital lives destroyed, after Microsoft closed their email accounts without warning.
BBC News has spoken to 20 Palestinians living abroad who say Microsoft, which owns the voice and video chat app, kicked them out of their accounts. The total number affected is thought to be much higher.
In some cases, these email accounts are more than 15 years old and the users have no way to retrieve emails, contacts or memories.
Microsoft says they violated its terms of service - but will not say how - and the decision is final.
The Gazans say they have no links to Hamas - designated as a terrorist organisation by some Western countries, including the US, where Microsoft is headquartered - and accuse the technology giant, the most valuable company in the world, of persecuting them unfairly.
When they’re not recording your desktop in an unencrypted database for AI, boot-looping your computer with bad patches or showing ads in your start menu, they’re disabling your account for calling family to see if they’re still alive. Damn.
Evil is on parade in our time.
I’m glad I switched to proton.
Apartheid regime
Fuck microsoft. I stopped using their products a long time ago, not only do they steal my data, they make my pay for stuff on top. And despite all that, their products are still garbage quality.
There needs to be an international regulatory process with separate national regulatory agencies to address tech companies over reach. Sony will end any account that does a back charge even if it is a scam. Microsoft do this. You literally cannot get google support to help if you are a small business.
These services, to at least some degree impact lives and livelihoods to a huge extent.
Microsoft says they violated its terms of service - but will not say how - and the decision is final.
Classic Microsoft move. Do you remember what happened to kids and people being forced to register a Microsoft account to not lose their paid license to Minecraft, but who didn’t want to hand out their phone numbers? Yeah. They have somehow “violated the terms of service”, even if they did nothing with their account after registration, other than the license being transferred!
