14 DAY TRIAL // The European Parliament no longer allows its members to install Microsoft's Outlook mobile apps for fears that the Redmond-based tech giant would get access to passwords and documents that would be stored on servers in various regions across the world.
An official statement is not yet available, but a report by The Inquirer reveals that the European Parliament sent a note to all members, warning that Microsoft's Outlook app, which is available on both Android and iOS, is based on an engine that could expose passwords and file.
“Please do not install this application,” an email reads, adding that European Parliament members should change their passwords as soon as possible if they have already configured Outlook to connect to their accounts.
The reason, they say, is as simple as it could be: Outlook sends information such as passwords to Microsoft, which then stores everything on data centers across the world. All these cloud-based servers are easily accessible by Microsoft and third-parties, while the European Parliament has absolutely no control over the locally stored data.
Protecting user privacy
The new Outlook app for iOS and Android is basically a rebranded version of Accompli, an email app maker that Microsoft has recently purchased and which helps the company improve its own email client.
In the privacy policy on its website, Accompli says that no one would ever read your emails or access your attachments, but it admits that some data, including attachments and messages, could be temporarily stored on their servers to “accelerate deliver of your email to your device.”
This is actually one of the issues that developer René Winkelmeyer at Germany-based midpoints GmbH has recently found in the app, explaining that storing email account credentials in the cloud for speeding up the program could easily expose your data.
The push notification system of the Outlook app uses credentials stored in the cloud as well, he said. Outlook works with Microsoft Exchange, Office 365, Outlook.com, iCloud, Gmail, and Yahoo Mail.
Microsoft's Outlook is set to arrive in Windows 10 for PCs and phones as well sometime in the near future, as the company is working to make the email client available across all devices, no matter if they run Windows or not.
Redmond has already promised to fix a number of bugs in Outlook, but it's not yet clear if they are related to these security concerns or not.
We've reached out to Microsoft for some information on this and will update the article accordingly when we get an answer.
