In the past I would have answered differently. Today after waking up to the sound of barking dogs I open my email and one of my customers was asking about an email they received from Microsoft insisting they respond and accept the new terms of agreement.
Younger me might have responded by saying something like: it’s okay. You can ignore that. It’s just required by law that they alert you when they make changes.
Now that I have passed the 60-year landmark, my reply was a little bit more cynical. I am officially a grumpy old man.
That is a serious looking email to be sure. It appears in every way I can detect to be real, but it really isn’t too serious. Companies tend to update their terms all the time, and are required to inform you and pretend like you’ll pay attention and care but they also know 99% of their users won’t.
You don’t officially own software anymore. You pay for it, and are granted a license to use it. It’s one of the biggest legal loophole scams we all go along with because we have to.
You don’t have to do anything with this email except shrug your shoulders and understand monopolies are screwing us all, taking our information and selling our data and basically treating us more like the product than the customer and this is where we all are now.
You have been legally informed of this, and you continue to use Outlook and Word with this knowledge, primarily because the competition has been squashed. Enjoy.
