[Microsoft]Introducing Office 365 Message Encryption: Send encrypted emails to anyone

So Microsoft has full access to all of the encrypted messages including replies and forwards? It knows, by Microsoft account and often personally identifiable information involved, who sends, reads, and/or replies along with their IP Address and the time at which they perform actions? When someone receives such a message and clicks on the attachment to explicitly or implicitly log in to a Microsoft account, their email address... which may be a private one or secondary one which Microsoft hasn't tied to personally identifiable information... becomes correlated with their Office 365 ID/Microsoft Account and the information (including possibly personally identifiable information) it contains?

 

So now what is the point of having encryption?

 

To make it harder for the "bad guys".

 

I think some would describe this as an identity based encryption scheme whereby you have to "prove" your identity in order to access the encrypted content. The "prove your identity" step here would appear to be having to create/use a Microsoft account which requires email address verification. The following correction to that Microsoft article would appear in order...

 

It's better than nothing I suppose - I guess it's encryption against hackers and snooping co-workers or family members, but I assume Microsoft still hands over everything unencrypted to the NSA...

If they are serious about protecting our privacy, they should add proper PGP encryption support for Outlook, ZRTP or similar to encryption to Skype and Windows Live Messenger, and security plugins for IE similar to Cryptocat in concept.

 

At least 95% of computer users accept what MS says at face value.