My rule of thumb is to NEVER use a Microsoft account for anything unless I’m forced to. And then I’ll create a brand new account for each use case. I so regret converting my Minecraft account. The old Mojang stuff was so much more reliable.
You didn't have a choice, right?
My daughter's school took over my personal Microsoft account
31–40 of 490 posts
Re: My daughter's school took over my personal Microsoft account
#32Despite the implication of malice that other comments seem to be directing at Microsoft, this just seems like a bit of an oversight (i.e. inexperience) on behalf of the school’s IT team. Nonetheless, I would have expected MS to ensure that the process includes clearer guidance for the account owner, and for deliberate decisions to be made by the school to enable this type of action. They did a very good job of provid…
Re: My daughter's school took over my personal Microsoft account
#33Re: My daughter's school took over my personal Microsoft account
#34The way Microsoft accounts work is almost completely opaque to users. I’ve been in similar scenarios — the switch directory or switch organisation technique usually worked for me - but wasn’t enough for this person. They never really give you enough information to tell what’s going on… maybe it’s a security risk to have consumers who are anything other than bewildered Kafkerian characters struggling against a faceles…
Now, if Microsoft bought Atlassian — that would be absolute theoretical maximum limit of peak confusion when logging into an app. “Warning: You are about to login to Microsoft Atlassian Fogbugz Trello. Have you cleared sufficient space in your calendar, notified your next of kin, put your affairs in order, and taken your sedatives?”
We, as an Atlassian plugin maker, chose GitLab internally, and Notion, both because at least it was properly integrated and didn’t have the awful Atlassian ID and switch between apps…
Re: My daughter's school took over my personal Microsoft account
#35Despite the implication of malice that other comments seem to be directing at Microsoft, this just seems like a bit of an oversight (i.e. inexperience) on behalf of the school’s IT team. Nonetheless, I would have expected MS to ensure that the process includes clearer guidance for the account owner, and for deliberate decisions to be made by the school to enable this type of action. They did a very good job of provid…
Re: My daughter's school took over my personal Microsoft account
#36Microsoft's organisation vs use of accounts is certainly a hot mess.. I'll be watching responses here and hopefully find out why my personal account sometimes says certain settings are managed by "my organisation". What freaking organisation is always my response; I've never been able to figure it out.
Additionally, go to Accounts in Settings and double-check that you're not logged into any "work or school" accounts.
The one thing I can't stand is that if you log into a non-personal Microsoft account in an app, there's a dialog that is very confusing[1]. It asks if you want to use that account everywhere on your device, but there's a box checked by default to let the organization manage your device, a button that says "Yes", and what looks like a hyperlink that says "This app only". I always uncheck the box before clicking "This app only", but I wonder if keeping that box checked would still enable organizational device administration. It screams "dark pattern" to me.
1: https://i.stack.imgur.com/gmp00.png
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Just to add a tip for others: If you want to use Edge for the Windows optimizations and PlayReady support for streaming services, but don't want to deal with all the annoyances, you can disable many of them via Group Policy[2]. For example, you can disable the "Search Bing in sidebar" option that shows up in context menus[3] that I always seem to accidentally click when I'm trying to search for something I highlighted. I also use Group Policy to set the default search and homescreen settings because then it won't annoy you with the recommendation to set it to Microsoft defaults every time it updates.
Firefox is my main browser, but I use Edge for streaming Netflix and the like because I don't get 4K playback via Widevine. It annoys me because Edge would actually be a great browser if the Bing folks weren't constantly trying to shove things down my throat and filling it with dark patterns.
2: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/deployedge/microsoft-edge-...
3: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/deployedge/microsoft-edge-...
Re: My daughter's school took over my personal Microsoft account
#37Re: My daughter's school took over my personal Microsoft account
#38I'm realizing more and more that relying on a large organization for a service where you are 1 of hundreds of millions of customers is a bad idea. First customer service will be automated or even non existant, and very poor. Secondly the product will have been 'tweaked' so many times for new markets and product extensions that it will be very fragile when you do something at the edges of its functionality (not what t…
Also, a software engineering product run by a large organization is going to have tons more functionality under its much bigger umbrella compared to a small team with a much smaller product. Consider AWS vs Digital Ocean. Both great companies, but AWS's umbrella of offerings is vast compare to Digital Ocean.
Re: My daughter's school took over my personal Microsoft account
#39So usually pressing the wrong option while logging with a new one and existing cookies from another one can land on this mess.
Usually the only way out of the mess is somehow via Microsoft support, which I only saw being successful via MSDN sales contacts.
Re: My daughter's school took over my personal Microsoft account
#40> It was created when I transitioned my Xbox LIVE account to a Microsoft account on 2014-03-07 (the LIVE account was created back in 2006, and neither it nor my Microsoft account were ever joined to any other domains). Hoping this raised issue helps cleaning up some of the mess, I find it fascinating how bizantine microsoft have become. I also have a skype account that became some other other account, but was using t…
Amazon used to allow having multiple accounts with the same email, but different passwords. And don’t ask what happens to personal accounts that get accidentally invited to corporate accounts via email adresses formerly used for the personal account.