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Microsoft is reportedly banning Palestinians in the U.S. for life for calling relatives in Gaza

A BBC investigation reveals that Microsoft is permanently banning Palestinians in the U.S. and other countries who use Skype to call relatives in Gaza.

Reportedly, Microsoft has been banning and wiping the accounts of users who have leveraged Skype to contact relatives in Gaza. In some cases, email accounts over a decade old have been locked, destroying access to banking accounts, OneDrive storage, and beyond.

United States resident Salah Elsadi lost his account of over 15 years in the dragnet. “I’ve had this Hotmail for 15 years. They banned me for no reason, saying I have violated their terms — what terms? Tell me. I’ve filled out about 50 forms and called them many many times.” Eiad Hametto from Saudi Arabia echoed the report, “We are civilians with no political background who just wanted to check on our families. They’ve suspended my email account that I’ve had for nearly 20 years. It was connected to all my work. They killed my life online.”

Many of the users affected by the bans expressed that Microsoft may be falsely labelling them as Hamas

jdeath ,

don’t ever forget that microsoft is evil

NutWrench ,
@NutWrench@lemmy.world avatar

As if I needed another reason to hate Microsoft.

davidwkeith ,

Time to build federated alternatives.

echodot ,

To email? Has being possible to host your own email server for decades. Don’t need to over complicate it with federation, also what would that even look like?

davidwkeith ,

No, Skype.

Email is the original federated social network.

smb ,

better do not hate, just make them irrelevant for yourself.

NOT hating is good for health and not depend on abusers is good for you too ;-)

Andromxda , (edited )
@Andromxda@lemmy.dbzer0.com avatar

Fuck Microsoft and all Big Tech corporations

TrickDacy ,

Uh, why would they do this?

Neon ,

Probably because they were warned that Hamas or another Terrorist organization out of Gaza is planning Terror Attacks on Europe or the US

So they just cut off any Communications.

bamboo ,

Alternatively the company is run by a bunch of racist pricks who support the genocide of Palestinians like you do

Gestrid ,

Every now and then, I’m reminded that Skype is somehow still alive.

autotldr Bot ,

This is the best summary I could come up with:

Today, BBC News put out an investigation having spoke to 20 Palestinians living abroad who claim Microsoft has permanently banned them from their systems for calling relatives in Gaza.

Skype might have fallen out of favor for general messaging purposes over platforms like WhatsApp and Telegram, but it remains an affordable service for calling cell phones directly via the web.

Many of the users affected by the bans expressed that Microsoft may be falsely labelling them as Hamas, the terror group behind the notorious October 7 massacre that killed hundreds of concert goers near Re’im in Israel.

Microsoft declined to respond to the accusation, but claimed that it doesn’t block calls or ban users based on geographical location.

“Blocking in Skype can occur in response to suspected fraudulent activity,” a Microsoft spokesperson told the BBC — potentially implying there’s more to the story.

But given how much of our online life is basically handed over to big corporations like Microsoft, who are under no obligation to guarantee access to these services, it is alarming how they can just ban you with no real explanation or transparency.

The original article contains 647 words, the summary contains 186 words. Saved 71%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!

johny ,

Could it be that our ally is running an extermination campaign against a civilian population? No, that’s impossible. They all have to be terrorists, and contacting terrorists is against our terms of service.

smb ,

one does not become dependent on tech giants without a critical loss at some day, no matter whats the “reason” for it and they tend to do weird stuff within or without laws…

For others or for a new start and how to avoid such in the future (maybe “migrate” your relatives to secure services “before” you get ripped off):

  • get your own domain like somestupidtext.info make sure the toplevel (.info .com .net or whatever) has laws that let you effecticely reclaim your domain if one of the providers block something or fail to do their job. also make sure you do not fall into only-first-year-very-cheap traps for domain prices. maybe check that the toplevel domain is not one regulary found to be used by spammers and thus maybe blocked by some providers.
  • use one company only for DNS related things, maybe name.com, but there are plenty others and lots of generic hosting providers also provide dns-only hosting.
  • get some provider to host email for your domain or run your own emailserver and set mx records to that mailserver.
  • configure and change valueable services to your email addresses under your domain
  • make sure you have a local(!) copy of all your emails that automatically updates itself, if you can, at least daily, offlineimap checked in into a git repo could do a good job
  • if one provider sucks, change it and leave the rest as is.
  • the setup alone already shows the provider, that only gov (of that toplevel domain) can effectively block you, as when the email provider tries to block you, you find a new one and change MX records (and obviously cancel and stop paying the blocking one), if the DNS provider tries to block you, you get a new provider and transfer the domain to it, if that fails a lawyer could help) also the small providers have usually no way to know what you do on another account at another company, only if you put your whole life into the hands of the few known big evil ones, you are that vulnerable to the chaos they produce.

also setting up recovery addresses (if possible) is a good idea, like when one email is unusable for whatever reason, the provider already has a known email address from you to start a recovery process, of course that second email address MUST be out of reach of the provider of the first one, that is, if you have somemailprovider.com address and one at microshits, then microshit buys somemailprovider.com, you have to change everything from that somemailprovider.com to a new one just to stay secure. due to this, your own domain with a connected email service of a random hosting provider comes in handy as you would not have to change all the email adresses but only that random email provider. also if skype/zoom etc does not work for you, there are plenty of other ways to do video talks on the internet. i prefer to be independent for same reasons even though i haven’t been blocked yet, i just saw the signs of possible approaching evil because of the shitflow big evil tech produces all the time just to flush their believers view of what would be possible down the drain and choosed independence ahead of losses. following signs like leaving companies with red flags (like just too big, like already robbed their users, like give a shit on their users security, like give a shit on their bugs and blame users while their own big-tech-company-network is pwned by someone unknown for month and such) a more privacy aligned messenger that supports videocalls would be for example matrix, there are multiple clients to choose from and lots of providers to choose from (also self hosting or becoming a provider is possible while for talking to each other it is NOT necessary to use the same provider, but again self-hosting of course is most-secure) one cannot do things securely without knowing a bit about what it is. to learn more about dns, email, matrix or other topics the internet is full of informations, sometimes wikipedia is very helpful and linux user groups exist for talking about stuff and helping each other. the type of support is different and -as i see it - much more efficient, but different, there is no one to do it for you (or you get into the very same dependency trap again) but you are encouraged to learn what it takes to do so and do it yourself.

example prices from a random dns provider: .de 10€ / year .eu 16€ / year

random mail provider imap email 100GB storage 3 € /month

that is having more control over your email than when using big tech, may cost you more or less 4€ per month (and maybe the learning time to set everything up). for matrix server one might use managed services, looking around i found etke.cc with 5€ as a base minimum when you provide your own VPS for it, but with many other options too. maybe the free hosting announced by element.io where i did not look into yet is an option too. i prefer my own domains and servers, but just using separate hosting companies for dns, email and matrix gives a whole lot more control while still beeing a simple and adjustable setup. while matrix does not lock you in into one instance from the beginning (i can chat/call from/to my own account/server to any other account on other servers while beeing able to try this out using a multi-account-client that connects to all acvounts/servers at the same time) they now have bridges so one can use the same client to chat with others on telegram or whatsapp (and others) too, so this is rather the opposite of vendor lock-in. while a matrix hoster could still block your account in error and if you did not use your own domain for your matrix account at the hoster, you could connect to your friends again from another account at another hoster as you would still have their matrix adresses stored in your client. however to securely use matrix one should read about its security mechanisms and what backup keys are and why one should validate new connections.

if you had the loss, at least take advantage of the message/lesson: big tech is too powerful and thus insecure. maybe do three steps in parallel: choose and migrate to smaller providers, more providers each for different things, if one f**ks up, everything else stays in place, thus less stressful on problems. second step in parallel: get yourself into DIY your digital life. every little step into independence is a step more powerful while removing the very same power from big tech to attack the stability of your digital life. third step in parallel: share your problem including the possible solutions, which you choosed and how it went to those you think might take advantage of that information ;-)

recapitated ,

I love these ideas but self hosting is simply not a solution for average citizens who aren’t skilled at such things. To them it would be like paving their own highway with bridges and also maintaining and policing them. It might be easy for you and me, but that’s because we have training and experience and we chose this way. It’s not a justifiable opportunity cost for most people.

I think a different kind of org than the googles metas and Microsofts of the world is in need, like a compute & communications co-op that can actually compete on that level of capability offerings, accessibility, performance and security.

smb ,

i think it should not be too difficult to compete with m$ security, that is at least true for the state of the last 30 years or maybe more.

But something like a non-profit organisation - or a bunch of them- that make self-hosting for essential services (like email, messenger, video calls) a charm could be a big win for billions of peoples.

Lyricism6055 ,

Self hosting email is a terrible idea. Your Internet goes out? All your emails are black holed

JasonDJ ,

Pfft even a shitty DNS host could do that.

eNom is supposed to forward all emails from one of my domains to Gmail. I get maybe half of them. Really gotta get around to moving that over to SimpleLogin and Cloudflare.

TheFin ,

Absolutely agree

Prandom_returns ,

REGULATE MONOPOLIES

bamboo ,

While I agree enthusiastically, does Skype even have a dominant market position, let alone a monopoly?

uis ,

Ok, oligopoly. Happy?

Prandom_returns ,

I’m talking Microsoft. Having this much control over means of communication is alarming. And Microsoft continues to grow.

Hypothetically, I wonder if they can just block Microsoft accounts alltogether, denying access to (now, kind of mandatory MS account) Windows machines.

dev_null ,

Why does it matter? If they ban your Microsoft account because you had an upside down Xbox sticker on your fridge, is it relevant if Microsoft has a monopoly on sticker manufacturing?

Skype doesn’t matter because they don’t ban you from Skype, they ban you from everything, including things they do have a dominant market position on. And also from Skype, which doesn’t matter as much.

bamboo ,

When I posted that comment I was thinking specifically about Skype, not MS as a whole. I agree MS is well more than large enough that it needs regulation.

oo1 ,

It’s the “bundling” angle again, very hard to prove the dominant position. But them linking it all to the one account is an important feature that ties the bundle together.

Fijxu ,

Use matrix.

Linkerbaan OP ,
@Linkerbaan@lemmy.world avatar

Matrix originating from israel does sketch me out a bit since they are famous for spyware. Do source code reviews check out?

autonomoususer ,

What else should we use?

Linkerbaan OP ,
@Linkerbaan@lemmy.world avatar

Signal is decently rated. it is still a little more centralized than Matrix but that also makes setup easier. I’m not a cybersecurity guy though so I have no idea what’s actually good and what’s not, I just go by recommendation from people on the interwebs.

Andromxda ,
@Andromxda@lemmy.dbzer0.com avatar

It’s fully end-to-end encrypted by default, and it also encrypts and minimizes metadata. It’s also completely free & open source, and I don’t think they have ever terminated an account for any reason other than spam. These are the things that actually matter.

Adanisi ,
@Adanisi@lemmy.zip avatar

If there was malware in Matrix I’m sure the many people who have looked at the code would have found it by now and we’d hear all about it. It’s also worth noting that most Matrix servers you can choose are not in Israel.

And Signal is not a good alternative, as just like Microsoft here, they can ban you if they don’t like where you’re sending messages. Not that they will, but they have that power.

Free/open source software is an international development effort. Whether some developers are Israeli is irrelevant because the code is public and has developers worldwide.

And they are famous for spyware, yes, but that’s from specific state-sanctioned companies. Like NSO group.

PanArab ,

Another reason to boycott Microsoft. Though I don’t expect other tech companies to be any better.

vga ,

What confirmation do we have that Microsoft did not have a good reason to ban this person? There seems to be just this single report going around the net.

Linkerbaan OP ,
@Linkerbaan@lemmy.world avatar

What confirmation do we have the person did deserve the ban? Microsoft refusing to respond does not absolve them from guilt.

Also this happened to multiple people that called their family in Gaza, it’s not one instance.

ytg ,

Surely the US government won’t like that if they’re US citizens, right?

bamboo ,

They’re brown citizens though, so the US won’t do anything to help.

NoneOfUrBusiness ,

That sort of thing is only important when the other side is not Israel. See: USS Liberty, Shireen Abu Aqleh.

sol6_vi ,
@sol6_vi@lemmy.world avatar

Looks like I dumped msft at the right time. What ass hats.

Hotmailer ,

This is why America will crumble. In the USSR, the communist party was mostly Zionists. They’d purge the party from time to time and execute Russians in the party. They leeched on to America. They will leave when you are no longer relevant.

HereIAm ,

Oh stop it with this crackpot drivel.

Hotmailer ,

I actually pity you. The BRICS have started a separate economic order. The world doesn’t want you anymore. Your economy is based on dollar hegemony. You’re all armed to the teeth. It’s gonna be wonderful.

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