Tag Archives: Privacy

I found it funny to illustrate a post about a Microsoft bug with a Microsoft Copilot generated image containing garbled text

Can’t open a Microsoft Outlook protected message? This is how you work around it

Email encryption forever is a pain point in the IT ecosystem. PGP is a great system but hasn’t been widely adopted.
This is how I personally have used PGP in the past, for the <10 PGP emails I have received over my entire lifetime:

https://xkcd.com/1181
(Yes, I know the joke is more about sender verification and less about encryption itself)

Microsoft has rolled out their own solution to the problem: Outlook Protected Messages. A proprietary system on top of an open, wide-spread standard – I don’t really like that but hey, it is better than nothing!
If an Outlook user sends you such a protected email to a non-Outlook and non-GMail address, you will receive an email “Alice has sent you a message that was protected with Microsoft Office 365” and a link to click. You’ll be redirected to a page where you can sign in and receive a single-use code sent to your email address.

But here is the catch: This sign in just doesn’t work! The email I received these messages is not connected to a Microsoft account. So I could not login to request the single-use code. I then tried it with an email which was connected to a Microsoft account – turns out, this also doesn’t work! Even if the protected email was sent to this Microsoft account.

Somehow, the solution to this is to trick Microsoft into your browser being a mobile browser. Then, you are not asked for any sign in but can directly request the single-use code. This is how you do it, using the Browser’s developer tools:

  1. Copy the link from the protected message
  2. Open a new empty browser tab.
  3. Right-click → Inspect
  4. Click the “device icon”
    • On Firefox, it is on the right side of the bar
    • On Chrome, it is on the left side of the bar
  5. Your browser now acts as a mobile browser.
  6. Enter the link into the address bar
  7. Request the single-use code to be sent to your email
  8. Then enter the received code in the browser

Privacy in the Metaverse

Or: How to install any app on the Quest 3 without giving Meta your phone number.

With the long anticipated Apple Vision Pro become available at February 2nd 2024 (unfortunately only in the US), we’ll finally see Apple’s take on a consumer-ready headset for mixed reality – er … I meant to say spatial computing. Seamless video see-through and hand tracking – what a technological marvel.

As of now, the closest alternative to the Vision Pro, those unwilling to spend $3500 or located outside the US, seems to be the Meta Quest 3. And this only at a fraction of the price, at $500. But unlike Apple, Meta is less known for privacy-aware products. After all, it is their core business model to not be.

This post explains how to increase your privacy on the Quest 3, in four easy steps.

Continue reading Privacy in the Metaverse