MICROSOFT SAYS IT SNOOPED ON WORKER’S E-MAIL

Microsoft, which has skewered rival Google for going through customer e-mails to deliver ads, acknowledged Thursday it had searched e-mails in a blogger’s Hotmail account to track down who was leaking company secrets.

John Frank, deputy general counsel for Microsoft, which owns Hotmail, said in a statement Thursday that the software company “took extraordinary ac- tions in this case.” In the future, he said, Microsoft would consult an outside attorney who is a former judge to determine if a court order would allow such a search.

The case involves former employee Alex Kibkalo, a Russian native who worked for Microsoft as a software architect in Lebanon. According to an FBI complaint alleging theft of trade secrets, Microsoft found Kibkalo in 2012 after examining the Hotmail account of the blogger with whom Kibkalo allegedly shared proprietary Microsoft code.