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Comment by snowwrestler | Hacker News Reader

You’re writing down things that everyone already knows. But you’re seeming to not take the next mental step, which is:

Given that I understand all the bad things that a business can do, how do I structure a relationship with a service provider such that I get the benefit of their service, and avoid the bad stuff? What tools can I use to ensure our interests remain aligned?

You’re writing like it’s not possible to do that. Even though we live in a highly specialized society that is chock full of examples.

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Can you give one of those examples?

A large enterprise may have the resources (time and money for corporate counsel) AND leverage (# licenses needed across many products) to negotiate privacy terms that align with their needs, or even pick another product.

A smaller firm is effectively stuck: they don’t have the resources or leverage, and sometimes must use the same products as large enterprises to do business with them.

In the case of Outlook specifically, if you do business with enterprises that use it, your meeting calendaring needs to work flawlessly with theirs. A missed or broken reschedule or repeating event can mean your teams sometimes don’t show up when expected. This really happens.

> Given that I understand all the bad things that a business can do, how do I structure a relationship with a service provider such that I get the benefit of their service, and avoid the bad stuff? What tools can I use to ensure our interests remain aligned?

Has any business really succeeded in keeping business information confidential while outsourcing operation of that information? It seems like at a minimum you'd need a PCI-DSS/HIPAA-style audit regime, which I haven't seen the likes of MS granting access for (why would they?); even then those schemes aren't great at protecting confidentiality. Core business trade secrets get leaked all the time; the idea that a company would manage to protect stuff that's proprietary but peripheral, like how they use their workflow tools, seems like wishful thinking.

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