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Office 365 "The fine print" popup message - is it legitimate?

Copper Contributor

Greetings,

 

I have been happily using Office 365 (mostly Word) for many years, and I have never had any problems with any of the products. This morning when I loaded Word I was confronted by a pop-up message called "The fine print" asking me to accept terms of use in order to continue. I have been using Word for several years on this computer and I have never seen anything like this, I just want to confirm that this pop-up message is in fact legitimate and not some form of spyware or adware impersonating Microsoft.

 

Any assistance would be greatly appreciated,

Glenn

 

Here is a screenshot of the pop-up:MSWord-TheFinePrintv2.png

122 Replies
Update - restore worked. Rolling back Microsoft Office Pro....16.0.10325.20082 allows me to access the Office 2016 apps (at least temporarily...) As MS becomes more and more intrusive, evaluating alternative office suites and operating systems may be necessary...the cynic in me wonders if, with all the electronics today, is privacy simply a memory of a previous generation and no longer maintainable. (Why are you laughing Alexa?)

My sense of it is that this suggests that this popup is Microsoft behavior.

Do others agree?     ... and why is Microsoft staying silent about the problem?

Hi Russ

The issue has seemed to go beyond the initial post of the prompt in Office 365 which makes sense to me as it's subscription based, but as you say is also causing grief in the Office 2016 space too.

I had a quick message exchange with Microsoft Community Manager Eric Starker and he is onto the issue and is trying to get a response from the relevant folks.

Guess we will have to wait and see what's happening!

Best wishes and good luck Russ.

Cheers
Damien

Hi Walter

Hope you are well.

Yes I completely agree with you that the earlier advice I gave won't help as we have discovered from other users that the issue has gone beyond Office 365 to Office 2016 which wasn't evident until users specifically mentioned Office 2016 as their software.

I suspect if you accept the terms then life goes on as is but some users appeared to have issues after they did that.

I eagerly await a response from Microsoft to hear how this one goes. Microsoft Community Manager Eric Starker is onto the case!

Cheers
Damien

 

P.S. Just saw your next post about getting access after accepting the conditions, hopefully everything goes well across the board. I understand that any updates to Office tends to happen through Windows Update so maybe (my best guess) that's why a download happens?

Hi Peter

Yup it became obvious in the discussions. I'm also waiting to see how this turns out but I suspect legally in the EULA for Office 2016, they have the power to do this and by using the product we have accepted the conditions.

You'd be surprised how many products actually can do this to you and more.

Hoping those of you with Office 2016 software get this resolved and back to doing what you do best!

Good luck Peter!

Cheers
Damien

... responding to the additional information -- two problems exist with this solution (one is the rogue behavior -- what other consequences are there with endorsing this malfunction)...    and the suspicion, which remains, that there's an underlying thread of designed behavior here which will take the application in an unacceptable direction...    "update" indeed!

Thanks to all who are moving this process forward!

I suspect that rolling back won't be a permenant solution as Windows Update will eventually download and install the update that has caused the pop up.

But Microsoft might fix the issue or withdraw the update which would stop that from happening.

Time will tell?

Cheers
Damien

Hi Damien,

 

Yes indeed time will tell, and I suspect I will have to decide if I want to give MS additional permissions to tip toe through my computers or take a hard look at LibreOffice.

 

I have a potential side effect of the role back to a previous date (or should I say the from receipt of the original Fine Print Popup that escaped the rollback?)  Post roleback, my wife's sign in can no longer access Microsoft news, weather, or money from her tiles.  Click and the app appears to open and then poof,  it is gone.  My sign in and admin are fine.  Have reset/repaired MS Store, News, Weather, Finance - didn't help. Uninstalled and reinstalled, didn't help. MS Diagnostics talks about needing an account but she already has a hotmail account as part of her profile - just hasn't saved a password in her profile.  I have wasted more time trying to recover from Win 10 damages that I'm almost ready to start missing ME.

Hi John

Rolling back has consequences which can suck as you see.

In the end I think you have to find and be happy with what works for you. I do love my Microsoft products, but one size doesn't always fit all users.

On a side note, I think with the trends in technology, we are moving towards a society that will monitor everything we do and where privacy will no longer really be private.

Think of cameras in cities and towns monitoring you, software that will track your movements, shopping habits, etc.

In the future (my prediction so remember me when I'm famous for it) there won't be on premises or locally installed software, it will be subscription based and there'll be limited hardware as we will use dummy terminals that connect through high speed internet to servers that housing virtual machines for all our computing needs (or our mobile phones like Samsung Dex which has huge potential IMO).

Also the English language will be essentially short text message style writing as people will forget to spell words properly and just like ancient Egypt that posted pictures on walls of cats and what not, we pretty much do that now 3000 years later.

And worst case if things go with with AI, we can bow down to our Skynet overload.

With regard to Windows, in previous versions we had the choice to install updates and now it's mandatory in Windows 10. You can't stop it from happening. Software vendors will dictate how we do things and their EULA will be their bible.

I just hope our laws catch up quickly and protect us from our data being used inappropriately. Like what happened to Facebook and Google.

Hilariously funny, way off topic, but also true, prediction is now over.

Cheers
Damien

Found this in admin center today, so it is acknowledged.

office_fineprint_advisory.PNG

But you could say the same of Apple (Jobs and Gates took the graphical OS idea from Xerox)  and any other organisation that creates an ecosystem that you are joining ... this behaviour is not Microsoft specific and inherent to the SaaS model across the globe.  Just to be clear I'm not defending this activity ..

I just clicked on a Word doc and it opened without any issues. No pop-up, no muss no fuss. Fingers crossed?

I also note that Microsoft's acknowledgement, above, acknowledges only the problem--it does not tell us whether it/is/was a MS issue or potentially malware. It's good to see progress, but it gives us no guidance.

And Microsoft's Virtual Agent is STILL working on connecting me to a live agent . . .

It is not mentioning malware because it is not a malware. One can click on the advisory to read details. I haven't read the details. It was enough to email my users to click Accept when it appears after Office updates. In our case it doesn't come up again and is not blocking Office usage. Have more pressing issues than a simple license agreement popup..

I'm starting to wonder if it would be useful to get an attorney involved.

That's the detailed information from advisory:

Title: Issues accessing Office Online User Impact: Users may receive an unexpected pop-up regarding the license agreement and may also be unable to access Office clients.

 

More info: When users receive the pop-up regarding the End User Licensing Agreement (EULA), clicking "Accept" should enable access to Office clients. Dismissing the pop-up may result in Office clients closing. The content of the licensing agreement has not changed.

 

Current status: We've identified that a recent feature update has modified the storage location of the EULA acceptance information and is causing users to receive a pop-up message prompting them to accept the user agreement. We've initiated the process of reverting this update to mitigate impact.

 

Scope of impact: This issue may potentially affect any of your users attempting to access Office clients. Start time: Saturday, July 28, 2018, at 2:00 PM UTC

 

 

So it was a technical bug which caused for the same EULA agreement which is shown when activating new product to be shown to existing users/installations. It is saying they are now reverting the faulting update.

In important ways, it is "malware" -- it is inadequately sourced, so it could be "spoof'ed"...

The behavior is clearly wrong -- i.e. prompting for accepting a license that has already been accepted...

... and, even if it is Microsoft's mistake, there is no way to determine that it is harmless without triggering unknown events...    (so, for example, it is entirely possible that it would be "accepting" additional activities that a user did not want...)

 

Thus, users should not be clicking on something like this...    it should only be happening at an install sequence...


@Mark Tompkins wrote:

In important ways, it is "malware" -- it is inadequately sourced, so it could be "spoof'ed"...

The behavior is clearly wrong -- i.e. prompting for accepting a license that has already been accepted...

... and, even if it is Microsoft's mistake, there is no way to determine that it is harmless without triggering unknown events...    (so, for example, it is entirely possible that it would be "accepting" additional activities that a user did not want...)

 

Thus, users should not be clicking on something like this...    it should only be happening at an install sequence...



@Mark Tompkins wrote:

In important ways, it is "malware" -- it is inadequately sourced, so it could be "spoof'ed"...

The behavior is clearly wrong -- i.e. prompting for accepting a license that has already been accepted...

... and, even if it is Microsoft's mistake, there is no way to determine that it is harmless without triggering unknown events...    (so, for example, it is entirely possible that it would be "accepting" additional activities that a user did not want...)

 

Thus, users should not be clicking on something like this...    it should only be happening at an install sequence...


I heartily agree!  I was a little shocked at an earlier post that read, in part, "It is OK to Accept.  My version of the Agreement really didn't say anything....it didn't look like the standard Microsoft agreement. "

This is not normal behavior for a product that was installed months or years ago.  Simply clicking "Accept" in boxes that pop up out of nowhere is a recipe for disaster.

Completely agree - incidents such as this and the Windows 10 1803 BSOD update have all but destroyed my confidence in Microsoft.  Microsoft has a very real and serious credibility problem.

Hello Oleg K,

You have provided some information that you say is from a Microsoft advisory.. No offense, but I still would prefer to see a Microsoft response to this. 

Can you provide a link to the Microsoft website that contains this information ?  

 

For one thing, you listed "Start time: Saturday, July 28, 2018, at 2:00 PM UTC", but I was using Office 2016 applications without issue on Monday July 30.  I didn't see the popup until Tuesday July 31.

 

When is Microsoft going to respond to this matter ?   

Does Oleg K represent and speak on behalf of Microsoft ?

Oleg, thanks so much for tracking this down!  

While I had noticed that the license agreement text said 'last updated September 2017', I was concerned at the possibility of malware concealed by an apparently legitimate page of content.  

I even verify updates to products from Adobe and Malwarebytes, when they pop up, out of an overabundance of caution.  :) 

 

Thanks!

 

eta:  after reading others' replies, I'd also like to see an official communication from Microsoft. 

 

The screen image in Oleg's reply appears to be from the Office 365 admin portal, so presumably another Office 365 administrator can verify its provenance....