My business clients on hosted Exchange are paying for O365 Biz. Their local Outlook app has a Try The New Outlook switch in the upper right corner. That's all it says.
The one employee who clicked it (before I could warn them) found the local paid-for, Outlook app transformed into web-based Outlook running in Edge.
All of the same issues mentioned in the article were first discovered in this New Outlook by German researchers.
This client made a point of purchasing local-run Office apps. Web based Office is a non-starter. In this case, MS is using a deceptive method to hijack my client into running software - they they explicitly paid to not have to use.
Microsoft's behavior in this is clearly unethical.
New Outlook described in article is not PWA Outlook you have with "New Outlook for O365". PWA Outlook for 365 is different from this.
Part of Microsoft Problem here is they have 4 things they call "Outlook". Outlook the Consumer Desktop Application which is privacy nightmare referenced in this article. Outlook the personal free email hosting service (old Hotmail), Outlook the Business Desktop Application most people know. New New 365 Outlook which is just WebView2 Outlook.
> New Outlook described in article is not PWA Outlook you have with "New Outlook for O365". PWA Outlook for 365 is different from this.
Okay. And?
As I mentioned in my post, the same behaviors discussed by the Proton researchers were also discovered by German researchers in the "New Outlook". Does the purchase channel matter here?
> This is consumer grade Outlook hooked up to Consumer free mail hosting.
That is indeed what Proton showed.
And for the 3rd time, I am saying that German researchers showed that the same bad behavior happens in the New Outlook client that is part of Microsoft's office business suites.
> Outlook (Desktop/Web App) in 365 is COMPLETELY outside of proton article.
Again, so what?
Very specifically, please explain why it matters that the bad Business Outlook behavior was reported in a different article.
I have the latest version of Outlook with Office 365. There is a 'Try the new Outlook' on the right top which I have glued to 'Off'.
But when I click it I get the PWA version of Outlook shown in the article.
The old Hotmail service is now called Outlook.
The website there is the same as the one on Office 365.
And that website stuffed inside a PWA is the new Outlook meant to replace both the UWP Mail app on Windows 11 and the old paid Outlook desktop MFC C++ application.
Once this has been completed they have ONE version. The same website that drives outlook.com, Office 365 and the PWA.
Yeah, this just follows the rule of if its free, you are the product, not the customer. You're going to get ads and relinquish your data in exchange for the service.
For proton, I assume they have a free tier (I don't know I pay for it). So I guess they let people know to push adoption or get people to make the jump, but the assumption is they have some conversion rate to paying customers. For those that never want to pay for email as their usage scales, they're better off staying.
Although I understand your point, Shoshanna Zuboff would say otherwise. We are the resource; not the product, neither the consumer.
According to her, "their" product used to be information. Then it became prediction. And now it's behavior modification, which they achieve by constantly mining us (the data we provide them).
At least IMHO, this is a more accurate depiction of the current state of affairs. Although in the end, it may be quite a similar metaphor, either way.
This is a good addendum to my post, it expands upon it. I don't even take it as a correction, and I learned a bit. Thanks for this.
I don't know who Shoshanna Zuboff is (I'll 'kagi' them), but I agree with the points made. It's been an evolving strategy of how to exploit users as a resource for financial gain or at least cover the costs of the free tier service.
Microsoft is absolutely doing this to business customers. One of my corp clients who uses O365 Business + Enterprise Exchange got hijacked by the method in the below article.
