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Microsoft is reportedly banning Palestinians in the U.S. for life for calling relatives in Gaza (www.windowscentral.com)

submitted 1 month ago by Linkerbaan@lemmy.world to c/technology@lemmy.world

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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

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[–] dan@upvote.au 58 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (30 children)

Friendly reminder to not use freemail accounts (Hotmail, Gmail, Yahoo, etc) for anything important. It's very hard to get any sort of support as your account is seen as low-priority. Also, always use your own domain so that it's easy to move to a different provider in the future, without having to change your email address.

FastMail and MXRoute are good options. MXRoute has good Black Friday sales and all their plans include unlimited email address and domains (you're just limited by total disk space).

Microsoft's paid plan is decent too. $70/year for a personal account or $100/year for a family account (up to 6 people) and it includes the Office suite, 1TB cloud storage, and email.

[–] SulaymanF@lemmy.world 52 points 1 month ago (5 children)

Why would I give Microsoft money if they’re behaving like this?

[–] dan@upvote.au 9 points 1 month ago (4 children)

That's a reasonable question.

A lot of people are already paying Microsoft, either for OneDrive space or for Office. In that case, you may as well use what you're already paying for. They're also much more likely to provide support if you're a paying customer.

I wasn't saying to give Microsoft money, I was just saying that their paid plans are good value, particularly in the case where you need Office.

[–] jdnewmil@lemmy.ca 3 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Having used the web version of Office at my job, I know I would not pay for it. It is compatible-ish, but severely lacking in features, enough so that I don't trust it to render properly or maintain the formatting entered using the desktop app. If that is good enough then there are lots of alternatives.

[–] dan@upvote.au 1 points 1 month ago

The plan I mentioned includes the desktop apps, not just the web apps.

The web version of Excel is way better than Google Sheets IMO.

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