Microsoft halts Patch Tuesday email notifications for security updates

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Microsoft suspends emails as delivery mechanism for pushing its security updates notification

Microsoft will no longer send security bulletins, security advisories and security bulletin revisions to people via emails. The software giant has notified users, those that have subscribed to security updates, that the company will no longer push such updates to their email inboxes.

While we are yet to learn the reason behind this unexpected change, WindowsITPro assumes that it is because of the regulation in Canada’s Anti-Spam Law which comes into effect on July 1st, 2014. The software company advises users to either subscribe to the RSS feed of the security webpage or visit the website to keep getting the security alerts.

Below is the email Microsoft is sending to the people who had subscribed to the security updates.

Notice to IT professionals:

As of July 1, 2014, due to changing governmental policies concerning the issuance of automated electronic messaging, Microsoft is suspending the use of email notifications that announce the following:

Security bulletin advance notifications

Security bulletin summaries

New security advisories and bulletins

Major and minor revisions to security advisories and bulletins

In lieu of email notifications, you can subscribe to one or more of the RSS feeds described on the Security TechCenter website.

For more information, or to sign up for an RSS feed, visit the Microsoft Technical Security Notifications webpage at http://technet.microsoft.com/security/dd252948

As the email notes, the company is “suspending” the use of emails as a delivery mechanism for sending its security updates to people. It hints that Microsoft might resume the service at a later point. Several tech companies are trying to figure out how the ban on such emails will affect their businesses.