The campaign is being run in print, TV and online according to most people covering this although I have to say that I have not seen any TV commercials from Microsoft except the Surface ones. The campaign has the tag line of “Your privacy is our Priority”. Microsoft seems to think that by opening up this type of campaign pull in some new users for Internet Explorer and perhaps their products (Outlook.com, Office 365 Windows 8 etc). We know that Microsoft would love to pull users and traffic away from Google as the advertising giant has been kicking Microsoft and others around the internet. There is even evidence that Microsoft is behind the complaints in the EU that got Microsoft in trouble. They (Microsoft) are looking to do as much as they can to pull in new customers and if they can grab them from Google it is even better.

No here is the funny part of all of this. Microsoft is one of the companies that is behind the Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act. That means that while they are trying to tell internet users they care about their privacy they are also working to get a law passed that would allow them to freely trade your personal information with anyone they chose. It is sort of a mixed message and one that we are pretty sure will come back to haunt them in the end. We are reminded of Microsoft’s refusal to respond to questions about SOPA, but then being reminded that they were a primary member of the Business Software Alliance (BSA) who was a major supporter of both SOPA and PIPA. We are seeing the same sort of duplicity here.

What we would really like to see is some sort of full disclosure from Microsoft, Google, Facebook and others that explains their stance on these issues. It would allow people to make up their minds about who they want to trust with their private information. Baring that full disclosure about their real stance on privacy Microsoft and others are blatantly lying to consumers when they claim they are working to protect users’ privacy. So you can buy into Microsoft’s claims that they care about your privacy or you can look at the facts and see that they are just like any other of the big cloud companies and are going to do what they can to make a few more dollars.

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