The site: https://donttrack.us/ shows in a comprehensible way how googles data greed can affect you real life.
And if you still think this is just conspiracy, you have to know, that people thought the same about the NSA years ago.
Asking what you can do? Check out this site: https://prism-break.org
Interested in this issue? Look further on these sites:
https://dontbubble.us/ https://fixtracking.com/ https://whatisdnt.com/
It could happen that the directory sync service (DirSync) doesn’t sync the users UserPrincipalName correctly.
I had an issue where the UserPrincipalName from a user in the Office 365 windows azure directory has been made based on the user’s sAMAccountname. This wouldn’t be problem if as long the sAMAccountname is the as same as the UserPrincipalName, but as you can guess this is not everywhere the case.
In certain cases SharePoint alerts are more useful than workflows, f.e. having the possibility to let users manager their alerts is not possible with workflows.
To manager alerts for a couple of users on specific lists I’ve written a script that handles the whole cycle of alerts. It let me delete, update and create alerts based on predefined configuration.