The part I find the most enlightening (ie: disturbing) is that Canonical's only regret is that the sales rep used "a poor choice of word" and they will train their salespeople better.
I assume the "poor choice of word" was when the salesman said, "I saw that you spun up an Ubuntu instance". Was Canonical's biggest regret that the salesmen INFORMED the user that they are monitoring installs and linking them to contact information?
Canonical never said "oh the salesperson wasn't supposed to market to you with this information", instead they basically said, the salesman wasn't supposed to TELL YOU that we are monitoring what you install and linking it to personal contact details.
Exactly. The old "I'm sorry I got caught" and not "I'm sorry I did it."
The word "better" does not imply a commitment towards customers and/or investors. *The word "do" should not be seen as referring to the taking of any specific course of action which may or may not yield tangible change. *The word "can" does not signify a concrete ability and is not forward-looking. *The word "We" should not be interpreted as Canonical Ltd. nor any of its subsidiaries or affiliated entities.
>It Depends on what the meaning of the word is is
There's a big difference between "is" and "was". Which is what he should have said. There were no semantic games in that particular statement, in stark contrast to some of the other things he said.
I don't really understand why everyone is up in arms here. In this case, Microsoft is basically a reseller. They told Canonical that they sold one of their product to a customer and Canonical reached out on LinkedIn, a professional social network. It all seems fair game to me. This is not some creepy internet tracking using dubious way to segment people. This is basic direct marketing in a B2B context.
It's all pretty tame.
It is actually completely unacceptable on what is advertised as a secure platform to engage in targeted marketing AT ALL. If any information about what my company is doing on your platform is shared to other companies, then you are not secure by any definition of the word that I'm aware of. It is not for you to judge what information is valuable or damaging for us.
Security and data sharing have nothing in common. It is perfectly acceptable to share customers list when you are resellers if you clearly state you will do so in the contract. It doesn't become true because you write it in all cap and say it is not for me to judge. If you so value your company information, maybe you should start reading what you sign.
Once again, we are not talking about an unreadable EULA for personal software. Azure is a platform geared towards professional. Nothing creepy is happening here. That's Canonical reaching out and giving a potential customer a point of contact if they ever need support. This has nothing to do with broad data collection and spying and is perfectly reasonable. I don't understand why some commenters here find the idea of talking with an actual human being so traumatic.
> If you so value your company information, maybe you should start reading what you sign.
Is exactly what people are up in arms about. Even reading the EULA, you may not expect Microsoft to permit data sharing in this way. And if this is entirely unacceptable for you, then it's time to leave Microsoft.
Or you can make noise about it online like this, and cause Microsoft to realise this sharing will lose them customers. I doubt the data is worth the churn, and Microsoft will likely change the policy rather than lose the customers.
Well maybe it is ok from that perspective. However my personal reaction as a customer to such sales approach would simple be something in line of GFY to that salesperson.
Canonical never said "oh the salesperson shouldn't have had this information".
There's only one way they could have used it.
The sales rep was probably expected to reach out claiming some other reason, making it look like the standard LinkedIn spam, but in reality much more targeted.
“The first rule of the the surveillance economy is don’t talk about the surveillance.”
Of course they have the raw data, but it's possible the people who sent that tweet just have access to a database that contains only anonymized data.
"Customer privacy and trust is our top priority at Microsoft. We do not sell any information to third-party companies and only share customer information with Azure Marketplace publishers when customers deploy their product, as outlined in our Terms and Conditions. Our terms with our publishers allow them to provide customers with implementation and technical support for their products but restricts them from using contact details for marketing purposes."
My interpretation is:
Every time you buy or use something from the Marketplace, MS will give your contact details to the Marketplace publisher. That publisher is then restricted in what they can do with the information. They may not use it for Marketing, they may use it to provide technical support.
And if the answer to that last question is no, what can Canonical do with the data that's actually valuable to them? If I were given access to a database of sales leads that I was explicitly disallowed from contacting, I would actively avoid even accessing the data to avoid any accusation or perception that I violated those terms, just in case I independently got in touch with those same leads through a different channel.
Interesting that this is not so.
Microsoft being lily-white (/s) would ensure they had GDPR-like positive consent from customers that they could pass on those customers info to specific third parties...
The idea that companies keep some sort of information wall between their support and marketing departments is pretty ridiculous. MS have to be fully aware of this, surely.
So, the story is Canonical taking part in the same crap as the more overtly crap companies, and just this one agent not being clever enough to keep their leads under wraps.
GDPR obliges companies to provide information on all this parties PII has been passed to. Given cookie lists (or UBlock blocked files) are hundreds of companies long I'm surprised we're not getting reports of who is buying up all this info.
The data on who was doing what would be useful for providing implementation and technical support to people who has already contracted with Canonical for those services, both for providing the service and, depending on price structure, possibly for billing.
So then why should everyone else who doesn't have any contact with Canonical have their data forwarded to them too? This should be opt-in rather then opt-out, let alone always happening with no way to opt out
It's probably part of the contract between MS and Canonical.
I don't understand - what's the difference between marketing and sales? Sales is trying to sell you something? But that's also marketing?
This is the last part of the Microsoft statement:
"Our terms with our publishers allow them to provide customers with implementation and technical support for their products but restricts them from using contact details for marketing purposes"
Canonical then tells us that this person was a Sales Representative, and it is clear from the content that this is a message aimed towards selling. Canonical has broken Microsoft's terms. That said, I can't see where that legal restriction is (e.g. can't see anything like that in https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/support/legal/marketplace-...).