Office 365 forbidden in German schools.

The German state of Hesse declared that its schools may not legally use the Office 365 cloud product.

Hesse is one of the sixteen federal states of Germany, with a population of roughly six million (of roughly 83 million Germans).

Office 365 forbidden in German schools.

The press release specifically targets Office 365.

It also notes that the competing Apple and Google cloud suites, also do not satisfy German privacy regulations for use in schools.

Michael Ronellenfitsch, Hesse’s data protection commissioner, says the standard Office 365 configuration creates privacy issues.

He warned this week that data stored in the cloud by the productivity suite could be accessed in the United States.

Specifically, personal information from teachers and students would be in the cloud.

Ronellenfitsch says even if the data was held in centers in Europe, it is still “exposed to possible access by US authorities”.

Furthermore, the Federal Office for Information Security (BSI) added that Windows 10 also transmits “a wealth of telemetry data to Microsoft”.

BSI officials say they have reached out to Microsoft to see what data it takes from its services but haven't received any reply.