Microsoft, as part of its effort to rid the Internet of revenge porn, recently announced that it will remove all links that direct users to deviant contents. The new protocol from Microsoft will cover its search engine Bing, cloud service OneDrive and Xbox Live.
Microsoft chief online safety officer Jacqueline Beauchere shared on her blog, "Revenge porn is on rise across the globe. It can damage nearly every aspect of a victim's life, relationships, career, social activities. In the most severe and tragic cases, it has even led to suicide."
According to ABC News, victims of revenge porn can simply report the offending content in a webpage created by Microsoft and the company will remove it. Microsoft said that it cannot remove the content completely from the Internet but rather remove the links that direct people into the content. Even though the content stay online, Microsoft thinks that removing its links can help curb the upsurge of revenge porn.
According to Tech Times, Microsoft's Bing and Google Search are two of the biggest search engine together accounting to 90 percent search market share and their efforts to remove revenge porn links on their search results will have monumental effect in the spread of these morally and personally damaging contents.
Microsoft has been honing its company's mission to be a vanguard in keeping the Internet safe and clean. The company, on July 15, launched the cloud version of its PhotoDNA software allowing other companies to access it completely for free.
PhotoDNA is a software the uses sophisticated algorithm in order to detect and remove images of child pornography on the Internet. It is being used by some of the biggest Internet companies including social media giants Facebook and Twitter.