Is Microsoft Abusing Our Privacy?

I just recieved the article below from a co-worker. If this is true, then it may help explain the spam mail among other things you recieve. Any thoughts on this?

A small publication known as The Eastside Journal, based in Bellevue, Washington http://www.eastsidejournal.com/sited/story/html/92308 , reports that Microsoft has taken, uh, liberties with your confidential information.

If you want to use Hotmail, you have to sign up for a Passport - and in so doing you're added to the Passport database. Microsoft Messenger requires a Passport, too. Windows XP nags mercilessly, offering all sorts of goodies to get you to divulge your name, address, age, phone number, and the like, as grist for the Passport maw.

It seems that Microsoft changed the rules while you weren't looking. Unilaterally, Microsoft may have granted itself permission to pass along your personal information to other companies that use Passport on their Web sites. The personal information includes your email address, your birthday, your country and zip code, your gender and occupation.

Has Microsoft taken liberties with your data? There's an easy way to check. Go into Hotmail. Click Options (to the right of the tab that says "Address Book"). Click Personal Profile (in the upper left corner). Scroll down to the bottom of the screen and see whether the boxes marked "Share my e-mail address" and "Share my other registration information" have been checked.

Those boxes didn't exist when I signed upfor Hotmail, and chances are pretty good they didn't exist when you signed up for it, either. I certainly never gave Microsoft permission to hand out my email address - or my birthday, gender or occupation. I'd rather be dipped in oil. Yet both of those boxes on my personal profile were checked. I bet they're checked on your personal profile, too.