Microsoft's Twitter account: Don't use our e-mail
On Saturday morning, however, the Microsoft News Twitter account offered a curious instruction. It read: "Don't use Microsoft emails(hotmail,outlook),They are monitoring your accounts and selling the data to the governments. #SEA @Official_SEA16."
The accusation might be referred to as a Reverse Scroogling. Or, perhaps, a Microsofting.
As to the perpetrators, the "SEA" hashtag points to the Syrian Electronic Army, a hacking group sympathetic to President Bashar Assad.
The SEA has operated for some time now, hacking its way into places such as a BBC Twitter account.
Indeed, this is the second time this year that the SEA has targeted Microsoft. On New Year's Day, it attacked Skype's Twitter and Facebook accounts with the same wording as today.