Effective tomorrow, July 1, Microsoft's e-mail notification service that informed administrators around the world of the release and update of its monthly security bulletins is no more. The mailing list service has been cancelled.
The mailing list once provided advance notice of bulletins prior to each Patch Tuesday, notifications that the bulletins and their respective patches had been released, and updates each time a bulletin or patch was changed after release. Now anyone wanting similar notifications will have to subscribe to one or more of the various RSS feeds that are offered. This, of course, means using an RSS reader of some kind, making it rather less convenient than the e-mailed notices.
Microsoft has given no official reason for the decision, but a lot of fingers are being pointed at Canada's new anti-spam law. The law, passed in 2010 and taking effect tomorrow, prohibits the sending of any commercial messages without consent. For the next three years, businesses will be able to send messages using implied consent, wherein any business relationship (such as buying a product from an online retailer) consents to receiving messages. Beyond that, consent is required to be explicit.
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