Microsoft Office 365 Declared illegal for German Schools, Again (UPDATED)
The last time this happened was in 2019, when Office 365 was banned from schools in the German state of Hesse.
If you're curious: Office 365 package offers a polished set of proprietary tools used by many professionals worldwide, which is why it is popular.
However, it poses quite a few privacy concerns, as noted by German authorities, which have not been addressed yet.
Hence, the decision was taken by the German Data Protection Conference (DSK or Datenschutzkonferenz) to ban the use of Microsoft Office 365 in schools across the country.
UPDATE
In British media:
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Microsoft 365 faces more GDPR headwinds in Germany • The Register
Germany's federal and state data protection authorities (DSK) have raised concerns about the compatibility of Microsoft 365 with data protection laws in Germany and the wider European Union.
According to the German watchdog's report [PDF], which was written after two years of negotiations with Microsoft, the body says that the product "remains in breach" of the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR).
The 2020 working group was put together to bring the cloud service into line with the Schrems II decision of the European Court of Justice – and relates to ongoing European concerns about cloud data sovereignty, competition, and privacy rules.
Under the GDPR, children below the age of 13 are incapable of consenting to their data being collected, while consent may be given by those with parental responsibility for those under 16 but not younger than 13. When platforms do store data on adults, those customers are meant to be able to request the deletion of their records.
The report adds (translated from the German): "Many of the services included in Microsoft 365 require Microsoft to access the unencrypted, non-pseudonymized data."
Another one:
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Microsoft Office in trouble in Germany due to GDPR
Microsoft’s suite of productivity apps, Microsoft 365, is in hot water with German authorities due to an alleged incompatibility with the data protection laws of Germany and the rest of the European Union.
Microsoft has been in negotiations with Germany’s state and federal data protection authorities since 2020 about the compatibility of its 365 utility with the EU’s data protection laws. According to a report written by the Datenschutzkonferenz (DSK), Microsoft is still in breach of the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR).
By Sebastian Klovig Skelton, Senior reporter:
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Microsoft 365 banned in German schools over privacy concerns | TechTarget
Federal German data protection authorities have banned the use of Microsoft Office 365 in schools due to privacy concerns around the use of US cloud providers.
The German Data Protection Conference (DSK) – which consists of the German Federal Data Protection Authority and 16 state regulators – said that, given the lack of transparency around how Microsoft collects and processes personal data, as well as the potential for third-party access to it, the use of O365 is not legally compliant with the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR).
“Microsoft does not fully disclose which processing operations take place in detail. In addition, Microsoft does not fully disclose which processing operations are carried out on behalf of the customer or which are carried out for its own purposes,” said a report by the DSK working group looking at the issue.
“The contractual documents are not precise in this regard and do not allow for conclusive evaluation of processing, which may even be extensive, including for the company’s own purposes,” the report continued.