Yesterday, I blogged that users in Iran, all Arab countries, Burma, Nigeria, and the Central Asian nations had been blocked from turning on HTTPS encryption within Hotmail. This was true.
According to Microsoft, this was a bug that affected users not only in those countries, but also in the Bahamas, the Cayman Islands, and Fiji. The company stated:
“We do not intentionally limit support by region or geography and this issue was not restricted to any specific region of the world. We apologize for any inconvenience to our customers that this may have caused.”
Having just tested this myself–by setting my country of residence on Hotmail to Syria and enabling HTTPS–I can state with certainty that the problem has been fixed.
11 replies on “Microsoft Fixes Bug; Re-enables HTTPS for All Users”
[…] Update 2: Microsoft has fixed the bug; all users can now enable HTTPS. […]
My twitters not working i can’t get anyone to reply? i have been on 6hours tweting and nothing what do you think? Neilbbareno more info google
But Microsoft has not fixed the Bing issue!
You’re correct, and frankly, I don’t suspect they will.
Sounds like a pretty good idea to me dude.
http://www.privacy-online.it.tc
Jillian C. York » Microsoft Fixes Bug; Re-enables HTTPS for All Users…
Here at World Spinner we are debating the same thing……
[…] Jillian C. York » Microsoft Fixes Bug; Re-enables HTTPS for All Users […]
I’m still suspicious. They make it sound like some bug that was not targeted to any particular “region”, but the list of countries seems anything but random. Most if not all have repressive regimes and/or have seen internal conflicts. Microsoft should be pressed further on this.
I’m still suspicious, too, but in the interim, I’m just really glad this is fixed for users in countries where it’s needed.
[…] Tajikistan, and Kyrgyzstan, could not employ the secure browsing protocol. In response, Microsoft said it was not intentional, but a bug, and they have fixed the […]
[…] Tajikistan, and Kyrgyzstan, could not employ the secure browsing protocol. In response, Microsoft said it was not intentional, but a bug, and they have fixed the […]