Microsoft Azure and Canonical Ubuntu Linux have a user privacy problem
1 min read
Feb 16, 2021
Security advisor Luca Bongiorni spun up an Ubuntu Linux instance on Azure and was extremely annoyed to receive a sales message from a Canonical representative three hours later. Say what?? Bongiorni openly voiced his frustration, "WHY [did] MICROSOFT FORWARDED TO UBUNTU THAT I SPUN A NEW VM!?!" Customer privacy, what's that?"
It was just another day for Luca Bongiorni, a security advisor for Bentley Systems. He'd just spun up an Ubuntu Linux 18.04 instance on the Microsoft Azure cloud using a corporate sandbox for testing purposes. Three hours later, on Bongiorni's LinkedIn account he received a message from a Canonical sales representative saying, "I saw that you spun up an Ubuntu image in Azure," and telling him he'd be his "point of contact for anything Ubuntu-related in the enterprise." Say what??
Actually, Bongiorni was a little more "frank" about his annoyance and surprise that a Canonical salesperson had tracked him down on an entirely different service and knew that he had just used Ubuntu on Microsoft Azure. "What the f*** is happening here? WHY [did] MICROSOFT FORWARDED TO UBUNTU THAT I SPUN A NEW VM!?!" Customer privacy, what's that?
