When we talk about cryptocurrency mining we mainly imagine long shelves full of continuously operating GPUs, but this is not always the case: while the miners sell off the Mining Machines, Microsoft prohibits mining through its cloud services without notifying users.
As reported by The Registerat the beginning of the month the Redmond company has updated the “Acceptable Use Policy” for Azure and Dynamics 365 services by including a key statement: “Neither the customer, nor anyone accessing an online service through the customer, may use an online service to mine cryptocurrency without Microsoft’s prior written approval”.
Microsoft itself specifies in the document that the policies have been updated in order to explicitly prohibit the mining of cryptocurrencies through Microsoft Online Services, thus requiring current miners to request written approval from the company. The only exception is made for “testing and searching for security findings”.
In the absence of formal announcements, Satya Nadella’s company said a The Register what the decision is due to a simple reason: “Cryptocurrency mining can cause disruption or even harm to online services and its users, and can often be linked to cyber fraud and attacks such as unauthorized access and use of client resources. We made this change to further protect our customers and mitigate the risk of disruption or compromise to services in the Microsoft cloud.”.
However, this is nothing new for cloud service providers, as Google, Amazon Web Services and Oracle also have such restrictions in place. It’s unclear whether Microsoft’s move originated from any specific cases noted by the staff.
Still speaking of services from the same company, apparently Microsoft would like to launch an app for everything from online searches to shopping.
