from Hacker News

Microsoft blocks Tutanota users from own service

by 0xmohit on 8/8/22, 1:38 AM with 32 comments

• by rez9x on 8/8/22, 2:14 AM

  I dislike Microsoft, but with Tutanota's history of greatly sensationalized editorials on their website, I'm skeptical. Is this a situation where Tutanota is specifically blocked or is a Microsoft email (Outlook, Live, Hotmail, etc) required? Or is it Microsoft email plus Gmail, since they're the two most popular services?

  If a privacy-centric service is being blocked because it's privacy-centric, that's an issue. If it's not on a very small list of approved services, because 99% of people have never heard of Tuta Nota, it's an annoyance.

• by zamalek on 8/8/22, 2:19 AM

  A user on Tutanotaa has clearly set up an AzureAD domain using tutanota.com. I doubt this is a conspiracy.

• by confident_inept on 8/8/22, 2:25 AM

  I have a short tuta.io address that always gets odd looks when I spell it out to people, who tend to react weirdly when not hearing a major domain when typing in an email address.

  Anecdote aside, I've had several people not receive my emails at all, some I've been able to actually test, using Tutanota for outbound messages. I've created or helped create Teams accounts for others several times in the past and have never run into anything like this with any other provider. Microsoft is setting a precedent by singling out one provider. I hope it's not a sign of things to come. Virtually all email is de-facto controlled by a Microsoft/Google duopoly.

  I looked into running a personal email server on a home machine once and was put off by how many people told me my messages would be undelivered without numerous hoops to jump through.

  What a mess.

• by jvilalta on 8/8/22, 2:13 AM

  I find their take interesting. I tried creating an account on their service using a VPN and they don't allow it. Double standard much?

• by haolez on 8/8/22, 2:30 AM

  "By knowing consumers so well, Big Tech can place ads at the right moment and at the right price. For every major turn in life, the appropriate ad will appear. Say, you are invited to a baby shower. Ultimately you will be bombarded with ads for baby’s clothes and toys, but maybe a handmade gift would be much more suitable?"

  What the hell am I reading?

• by longrod on 8/8/22, 2:22 AM

  Technically speaking, how is signing up with a Tutanota email different than signing up with another email? What does an email address actually reveal to Microsoft which they can use for tracking users?

• by dailen on 8/8/22, 4:26 AM

  I posted this on their reddit shortly ago. It's not only sensationalized, I'm gonna guess the knew part of this prior to writing the article. It's easy enough to resolve, you re-verify the domain (assuming they don't know which account was used originally) then you decomission the domain from Microsoft services. Frees it up to be used again bc it's no longer considered a managed organization's domain.

  =================================

  I work for an IT MSP and can attest what you're seeing is by design and occurs for a technical reason and is a security feature by Microsoft as a means of an organization controlling who can and cannot register accounts claiming to be from an organization or is not.

  This means that someone created a Microsoft organization (business) account and verified the domain tutanota.com. Once this is done no one can register a personal account.

  On the technical side, Microsoft has Teams highly integrated with Exchange Online. When there manages to be both a business org and personal accounts with the same domain, Microsoft services get tricky. When you "share a file" with someone it may not make it to your account. Could be because it tried to send it to the business org but it didn't find an account so it just fails and the recipient never gets anything. Causes all sorts of problems across the board and sometimes we have to go finding all the personal accounts using the company domain and change the email associated with the personal account.

  When you are troubleshooting this, there's two ways to login to Microsoft really, the business/organization side or the consumer/personal side. Now if you happen to be on both by registering for a personal Microsoft acct prior to the organization verifying its domain, then some parts of Microsoft's sites/services make some assumptions as to which one you probably want. To rule out account confusion, I go to https://myworkaccount.microsoft.com or https://account.microsoft.com and login with the appropriate account.

  If Tutanota does not using Microsoft for any sort of organizational management, Microsoft single sign on, Azure services, etc, then just contact their customer service to tell them that the domain was verified but you can't find the account associated. They may ask you to do your own verification by adding a txt record. Once you have control of the verified domain, you can go through a process to completely remove the domain from Microsoft services.

• by andrewmutz on 8/8/22, 2:39 AM

  Does anyone actually know why it is blocked? Because the article doesn't say.

• by GraphenePants on 8/8/22, 2:41 AM

  A review of Tutanota's product was conducted and it was found that this service fails to scan emails for highly dangerous virus links. Therefore it stands to reason that Microsoft, which also provides an enterprise-grade email service, is making a professional decision to protect its users.