Microsoft's Former Worker Alex Kibkalo Gets 3 Months In Prison

Alex Kibkalo, a former Microsoft employee, kicked up quite a debacle earlier this year after leaking information related to Windows 8 to an unknown French tech blogger. Kibkalo plead guilty in early April, and has now been sentenced, receiving three months in prison for the theft of trade secrets.

Nothing about the situation in and of itself was of particular interest — leaks happen every day, after all. It was the means by which Microsoft discovered the leak that caught the most attention: snooping in the aforementioned French blogger's Hotmail account for details.

This caused a justified ruckus amongst users about the privacy violation, and about whether Microsoft had the right to pry in users' email accounts as part of an internal investigation, no court order involved. As a result, Microsoft made some changes to how it handles these situations.

As for Kibkalo, who worked for Microsoft for 7 years, he'll spend 3 months in prison. Back in March, when the prison term agreement was made, Kibkalo was also set to pay $22,500 in restitution to Microsoft, but it seems that part of the sentence has been dropped.

SOURCE: The Seattle Times