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My daughter's school took over my personal Microsoft account

jeffgeerling.com

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Re: My daughter's school took over my personal Microsoft account

#101

Post by Stranger43 »

helsinkiandrew wrote: post #68
zamnos wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A father with a daughter that goes to a school, and the father has a Microsoft account, is nowhere near an "edge of functionality". Sounds more like Microsoft has a too-complex login system on their hands, one that needs a ton of backend rework to happen in order to simplify the system for the user (and the developer)'s sanity. Also, a software engineering product run by a large organization is going to have tons mor…

> is nowhere near an "edge of functionality" No, but something unusual went wrong and getting it fixed will be harder at MS than a smaller company. There probably isn't a single person who understands why without a fair amount of research. Without the publicity, MS would be inclined not to spend the effort to fix. > Also, a software engineering product run by a large organization is going to have tons more functional…

The problem is not that there is no one person it's that the team that knows the details are insulated from end users by layers of layers of bureaucracy needed to keep them from being flooded in identical/trivial tickets to the point where they never get to look at the actual product they are developing.

With smaller outfit's the L2 tech support might actually be having a line of communication directly to engineering, where in large companies there might be an L3-6 plus different product owners and escalation managers involved before a case gets in front of the engineering team.

Re: My daughter's school took over my personal Microsoft account

#102

Post by steve1977 »

dustedcodes wrote: post #52
theK wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, the identity side of MS products is really dysfunctional. Every time I try to use teams or azure it ends up in hours of finding out the right procedure to log in or switch an account effectively. And then you get the people asking naively "why are you getting so mad at them"...

How do organisations justify so many lost hours of a day where employees just struggle with Microsoft’s abysmal software instead of doing real work.

Considering many of those employees are doing bullshit jobs, it probably doesn't really matter at the end of the day.

Re: My daughter's school took over my personal Microsoft account

#104

Post by asplake »

jackjeff wrote: post #7

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.

For that reason I refuse Teams calls that require a login

Re: My daughter's school took over my personal Microsoft account

#105

Post by submeta »

Over the years, an overwhelming number of services have been consolidated together. Whenever I require access to Office365 or Outlook, I find myself being redirected to numerous domains including msn, microsoft, live.com, and others that I cannot recall. The entire situation is chaotic and disorganized. And then, god forbid you have a problem.

Re: My daughter's school took over my personal Microsoft account

#106

Post by kl343 »

Firmly agree with other posters that Microsoft's identity services leave a lot to be desired... but Jeff is being a bit sensationalist here.

The school did not "take over" his MS account. At some point (likely amidst a mountain of other onboarding tasks for his daughter's enrollment) he would have received an invitation to join the school's Azure AD tenant as a guest/external user. In this case, he chose to join using his Microsoft account, rather than create a new email-based guest account.

"Leaving" the school's org only breaks one side of the federation, and the guest account and it's association to the school's Azure tenant still remains.

To resolve, he'll need contact the school and have them delete the account. Meanwhile, it probably would have been better to create the app beneath an Azure AD tenant belonging to the non-profit org in the first place.

Re: My daughter's school took over my personal Microsoft account

#108

Post by neodon »

Am I the only one who uses browser profiles to separate my personal browsing from work or other organizations I'm a part of? When I mention this approach to people they give me a strange look like I'm crazy.

In Chrome you just create a new profile for each identity you have. If you're opening random incognito windows or using different browsers all the time to log in with different identities, you should be creating profiles instead. Everything is separate including bookmarks, sessions, cookies, extensions, etc.

Re: My daughter's school took over my personal Microsoft account

#109

Post by Strom »

ly3xqhl8g9 wrote: post #100
ccouzens wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or run apps like Teams in a web browser. Web browsers have good isolation techniques like Chrome's profiles and Firefox's containers. Teams is written using web technologies so you're getting the same experience as the app.

The problem is that Windows 11 and above (try very hard to) require a Microsoft account, because these orcas of computing want to remind you with every step that you don't own the device you bought. Hence it's simpler/better to just virtualize everything. Besides, there is a very satisfactory feeling when something doesn't work for whatever reason, you do a quick search and see that apparently you must edit some awfu…

> The problem is that Windows 11 and above require a Microsoft account

It is not quite a requirement, I have my Windows 11 Pro running just fine with no Microsoft account. They do attempt really hard to make it look like it's required though. Even going as far as showing a fullscreen app after Windows update that only has options for registering or login, but luckily Alt+F4 closes that abomination.

Re: My daughter's school took over my personal Microsoft account

#110

Post by hkt »

ly3xqhl8g9 wrote: post #100
ccouzens wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or run apps like Teams in a web browser. Web browsers have good isolation techniques like Chrome's profiles and Firefox's containers. Teams is written using web technologies so you're getting the same experience as the app.

The problem is that Windows 11 and above (try very hard to) require a Microsoft account, because these orcas of computing want to remind you with every step that you don't own the device you bought. Hence it's simpler/better to just virtualize everything. Besides, there is a very satisfactory feeling when something doesn't work for whatever reason, you do a quick search and see that apparently you must edit some awfu…

I haven't used windows since 2008 and you've just made my day with this post. I have never felt so vindicated.
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