No more potty mouth on Microsoft Services!
No more swearing on Skype, in Outlook.com emails, in Office 365 documents, or on Xbox, Microsoft has told customers.
As of May 1, a new Microsoft Services Agreement will ban offensive language. Oh, and bestiality, too, plus a slew of other unsavory content types.
Here’s the new code of conduct:
Don’t publicly display or use the Services to share inappropriate content or material (involving, for example, nudity, bestiality, pornography, offensive language, graphic violence, or criminal activity).
The new offenses, which can get you kicked from services or lose you your Microsoft account, join the garden-variety evil villain ones: transmitting viruses, stalking, posting terrorist content, communicating hate speech, advocating violence against others, copyright infringement, and manipulating services to increase play count, among others.
What you’re up against if you violate the new terms:
…we may stop providing Services to you or we may close your Microsoft account. We may also block delivery of a communication (like email, file sharing or instant message) to or from the Services in an effort to enforce these Terms or we may remove or refuse to publish Your Content for any reason. When investigating alleged violations of these Terms, Microsoft reserves the right to review Your Content in order to resolve the issue. However, we cannot monitor the entire Services and make no attempt to do so.
The list of covered services includes:
- Skype
- Windows Live Mail
- Office 365
- Bing
- Cortana
- OneDrive.com
- OneDrive
- OneNote.com
- Outlook.com
- Xbox Live
No swearing or offensive language on Xbox Live? Well, hallelujah and good luck to you on that, Microsoft. Very young voices pipe up with very rude injunctions on the gaming platform’s chat features. Bullying and harassment run amok: it seems like shock-value is a game unto itself. So OK, good for Microsoft: now it’s got a policy to justify kicking off the jerkiest jerks. Microsoft has this code of conduct to spell out how Xbox Live customers are expected to behave.
With regards to Microsoft censors listening in on our Skype conversations for blue language or photos sent via email that are just way too sexy – or illegal – the company assured The Register that it doesn’t listen to Skype calls, and it’s not actively poking its nose into our stuff…
…as long as nobody complains, that is. Microsoft clarified that if it receives a complaint about a potential breach of the code of conduct, be it in a Skype chat, an email or whatever, it may examine private files and conversations.
So while Microsoft says it’s not actively policing content, you could still start blipping on its radar if somebody were to complain about, say, an Office 365 email stuffed full of profanity, or a nude selfie you sent them via Outlook.com, or using the Bing search engine to enter strings that insult someone.