Last Monday in March (Opening Day for you baseball fans) - some privacy/security bits and bytes to close out the month.

Microsoft:  “We won’t access private e-mail accounts …  Promise.”

Microsoft has committed to no longer accessing the private e-mail accounts of its users after criticism that the company looked at the e-mail of a former employee during an internal investigation. The company said it will turn such matters over to law enforcement. Microsoft has “advocated that governments should rely on formal legal processes and the rule of law for surveillance activities,” so “it seems apparent that we should apply a similar principle and rely on formal legal processes for our own investigations,” Microsoft’s General Counsel Brad Smith wrote in a blog post.

Another Chain Retailer Breached — Since October 2012

More than half a million customers at 34 liquor stores owned by Houston-based Spec’s may have had their payment information stolen in a breach that apparently dates back to October 2012.   The Texas chain has 155 stores and issued a statement on Friday saying that the breach continued from 2012 to as late as last week.

More Target-Related Lawsuits

In a rare move, two banks have sued Trustwave Holdings, the third-party auditor that validated Target’s compliance with the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS).  The lawsuit was filed in federal court in Chicago and also names Target and seeks class-action status, accusing both Trustwave and Target of negligence, deceptive practices and misrepresentation.

And finally,

“[Baseball] breaks your heart. It is designed to break your heart. The game begins in the spring, when everything else begins again, and it blossoms in the summer, filling the afternoons and evenings, and then as soon as the chill rains come, it stops and leaves you to face the fall all alone. You count on it, rely on it to buffer the passage of time, to keep the memory of sunshine and high skies alive, and then just when the days are all twilight, when you need it most, it stops.”    ―    A. Bartlett Giamatti, Take Time For Paradise: Americans And Their Games

Play ball!