Microsoft has announced that it would change its policy for its email customers and will start warning them when it detects any hacking attempts done by any government body.
This announcement was made after the company was probed on the hacking of Chinese authorities into 1,000 Hotmail email accounts of international leaders from China's Tibetan and Uighur minorities several years ago. Microsoft was able to detect the hack but decided not to tell the victims and allowed the hackers to continue without being contested, Reuters reported.
Frank Shaw, spokesperson for the tech company, emphasized that they were never certain about the whereabouts of the Hotmail hacks, but he also confirmed that they did not inform Hotmail users that it detected the hacking.
"We're taking this additional step of specifically letting you know if we have evidence that the attacker may be 'state-sponsored' because it is likely that the attack could be more sophisticated or more sustained than attacks from cybercriminals and others," Microsoft's blog post reads, as written by Scott Charney, a high-level security executive at Microsoft, according to CNET.
Microsoft already notifies account holders if it believes that they have been targeted or compromised by third parties, but until now, it has not informed users of possible state-sponsored attacks, The Los Angeles Times reported.
