noyb has scored another win in its proceedings against Microsoft 365 Education: The Austrian data protection authority (DSB) has decided that the company illegally installed cookies on the devices of a pupil without consent. According to Microsoft’s own documentation, these cookies analyse user behaviour, collect browser data and are used for advertising. Microsoft now has four weeks to comply and cease the use of tracking cookies.
Well when it’s a popular software package, swarms of “hackers” with increasingly better AI tools will be attacking it, foreign governments will be attacking it, especially if it’s used by governments. So security will be a serious, constant concern.
Open source will both help and hinder that.
Really a nonprofit consortium should be formed with paid engineers who focus on this 100%. But that nonprofit will be infiltrated and corrupted… and so on and so forth.
Humanity is a corrupting force.
There is a reason we put locks on our doors and have insurance in case someone does break in. Sure this is an issue that needs to be addressed but it is one much smaller than getting the people in power to put things in motion. Once that happens (and we’re getting there) there will be funding and a public awareness campaign for sure, especially once the first politician gets hacked because they were using non-proprietary software because he wanted to kick Big Tech out…
Linux is already running the vast majority of internet accessible servers as it is, so this isn’t exactly a new issue that hasn’t been addressed.