SkyDrive: Everything on SkyDrive that you upload is private until you tell us otherwise.

Microsoft recently released a number of upgrades to our file storing and sharing service, SkyDrive.com.  A lengthy blog post by Omar Shahine on the Inside Windows Live blog describes the changes, which include strong privacy protections to help prevent the kind of “inadvertent sharing” which sometimes occurs with online services:

When you click Share in the SkyDrive info pane or from the File menu, you can
now do a few things:

  • Share via email. Enter any name from your address book, including
         contacts from LinkedIn, Facebook and Gmail. (If you want to import the
         email addresses of your Facebook contacts, first connect Facebook to Windows Live
         and then go to https://profile.live.com/connect and click the
         Facebook logo.) Since SkyDrive now uses your email address to send a
         sharing invitation, it reaches your friend’s inbox, not their spam folder.
         And when you select “Recipients can edit,” you can now collaborate with
         anyone, even if you don’t know their Live ID in advance.
  • Post to your networks. SkyDrive connects to many different networks, such
         as Facebook and LinkedIn, so that you can upload your photos and documents
         once and share with friends across networks.
  • Get a link. For many people, the easiest way to share is to
         grab a URL and send it to yourself, or paste it into another browser. Now,
         you can choose a View only link when you’re sharing something private, a
         View and Edit link when you want to allow the recipient to edit an item,
         and a Public link when you want to share something with anybody who can
         access the Internet.

The sharing experience is one that only happens when you choose to share something.
Everything on SkyDrive that you upload is private until you tell us otherwise.

-- David Burt, CISSP, CIPP