'Microsoft killed my online life,' Microsoft is reportedly banning Palestinians in the U.S. for life for calling relatives in Gaza
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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.

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

  • @[email protected]English
    11•4 months ago

    If only I could install it on the Surface Pro X…

    Damn, they worked so hard to gain goodwill in the last few years and it seems they’ve set out to destroy it in record time.

    WSL and WSL2, Android Apps, working with Qualcomm to get their ARM computers to a credible state, the new Powershell and the push to open source so many things…

    And in the past 12-18 months they’ve been crashing and burning, either backtracking on those things or by starting new initiatives to become scummier and scummier. TPM, Copilot, the ad situation, abusing their position of power with office/teams, the giant safety holes in the Recall feature… But it seems every day there’s something new in the news. It’s never ending.

      • @[email protected]English
        6•4 months ago

        That’s a nice project, but the last update was from 2 years ago and it needs way too much work to be close to usable. Windows 11 might be getting ads but at least audio works…

        To be Done:

        Support for Audio Subsystem #21
Support for LTE/Modem #22
Support for Webcams #23
Support for External Display Ports #27
Support for Suspend #29
Support for TrEE Services #37
Support for Sensors #38
Support for GNSS/GPS #39
UEFI ResetSystem() crashes #41

        Various other issues can be expected, see the issue tracker for details.

        • @[email protected]English
          3•4 months ago

          Yeah I kinda figured that, just did a quick Google search and found that.

          I’ve got a dell xps15, awesome Linux experience no issues with any hardware. Also think pads are great as well.

          • @[email protected]English
            1•4 months ago

            The problem I have is that this covers a very niche use case for me. I want it to be a tablet - lightweight etc, but not be constrained by mobile apps. I don’t want iOS’ version of lightroom, I want to have Darktable and Rawtherapee and a full fledged Visual Studio code, and well, you get the picture.

            I don’t need a laptop because I also have a MacBook Pro - I went this way because Apple’s processors are too far ahead to ignore. So I can take AMD but my opinion is that intel’s offerings are just not competitive and I’m not buying any of them.

            This leaves me with very few options - I’d be keen on buying an AMD-powered Ubuntu tablet but they don’t seem to exist.

            And also my surface works perfectly fine, so spending a non-trivial amount of money and ewaste just to change OS seems rather silly. I’m sticking to that one for now.

    • Todd BonzalezEnglish
      8•4 months ago

      they worked so hard to gain goodwill in the last few years

      I have no recollection of this.

    • Flying SquidEnglish
      1•4 months ago

      If only I could install it on the Surface Pro X…

      I’m not surprised that you can’t, but I’m still disappointed.