Microsoft instructs security of personal information

The company has invited other companies to 'participate in the discussion'.

As part of the program to criticize the collection of customers 'personal information and activities, on Tuesday, Microsoft released an internal brochure to protect consumers' personal information. The company hopes other companies will imitate themselves, and will have similar activities.

The booklet contains 49 pages, called Privacy Guidelines's Microsoft. The document is a discussion topic of Development Products and Services at the International Association of Privacy Professionals Privacy Academy 2006 conference on professional security taking place in Toronto (Canada).

The main features of the document are for software developers. They are instructed how to protect personal information when building applications, how to handle sensitive information in some cases such as when the website or components built on the web send information How individuals go online. At Friday's conference, Peter Cullen, Microsoft's top security strategist, also spoke about sharing and discussing with attendees.

Cullen said that Microsoft implemented a method to remove all personal information using the new phishing filter built into Internet Explorer. Filters are designed to protect users when they surf the web online. Filters that prevent a website from being hidden can hide the phishing mechanism to steal personal information and compare websites visited by users to know which websites are phishing websites. However, before going to any other website, the filter will delete any personal information that can identify the user.

Microsoft does not always see sensitive elements from customer information. Five years ago, the company tried to deploy a project called Hailstorm. Theoretically this project will store personal information, credit card numbers and passwords to help users easily log in to different websites. But customers have prevented and the project never becomes a reality.

Cullen said that Microsoft learned a lot from such experiences and hoped that other companies would implement the same practical operation as their own to protect their personal information.

' Undoubtedly, these activities will help us improve our thinking about how to provide safe and secure solutions, as well as respect and control of the personal information used. We think other companies should also participate in this seminar . '

Microsoft had created some fever earlier this year when announcing new anti-copy functionality in Windows OS, Windows Genuine Advantage (WGA) client, sending information from machines to Microsoft's internal server without users. know through an automatic notification component. This component will check to see if the user's copy is legitimate if it has not been verified reliably. After some accusations that the operation of the software is like a spyware, Microsoft removed from the operating system.

Cullen said the response was through WGA announcements and Microsoft's subsequent removals brought the company 'late profits'.

' We didn't spend enough time to make sure that the ingredient was up to our standards ,' Cullen concluded.

T.Thu