My daughter's school took over my personal Microsoft account • Hacker News Board

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

#121

Post by roxgib » Sat, Feb 25, 2023, 9:12 AM UTC

tacker2000 wrote: post #83

amatecha wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, that shit is why I took a brand-new NVIDIA Shield back to the store immediately after getting it home - it literally cannot be used without signing into a Google account. I bought it thinking, "hey nice, I can use this 4K Android home theatre device without Google being involved, since it's from NVIDIA and thus hopefully free of all that crap". I even did my homework on this: no material included with the produ…

I was looking at a media center/gaming emulation device and to be honest i dont see the benefit of these android based TV devices or Apple TV anymore. You can buy a good mini-pc for a couple hundred bucks and its much more powerful and flexible. You can run windows or linux etc and hook up any keyboard, controller, remote, and do whatever you like.

The obvious response to this is that the non-techy family members wouldn't be able to use it, but honestly most home entertainment setups are already crazy complicated, whereas everyone knows how to use a PC (for now)

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

#122

Post by mitch_f » Sat, Feb 25, 2023, 9:13 AM UTC

I had a very similar experience with my former employer and the proof of concept tenant they setup for Office 365.

My personal account was tied to that tenant, and whenever I tried to register an app - it was access denied. They even give you an option in the app registration interface in Azure: whether you want it to be in the company tenant or linked to your personal account. Regardless of what I tried, access denied. After a few weeks of this, I attempted to “Leave” the proof of concept tenant.

Yes, I clicked the scary leave button that tells you your data will be deleted. Access denied.

One of the options Microsoft suggests is to get in contact with the global admins to help out. Considering that tenant was abandoned 8 years ago, it was going to be difficult to get in contact with the global admins. I even contacted my former employer and requested they remove me. Their response? “We abandoned that tenant years ago, no one can access it”.

I created a support case with Microsoft for their Azure AD service requesting they remove my account from the tenant.

After some back and forth, repeating myself a few times, trying to explain what I save wanted to do in multiple different ways, and a screen share, I still wasn’t able to leave the organization. The case was escalated, and eventually I got on a call with the support rep and a manager.

We went through the “leave the organization” process together, and miraculously, it allowed me to leave. This was several months ago, by the way, and no data loss with my personal account that I can tell (so far), although I can’t guarantee when you click that scary button, your data will be safe.

I’m not sure what technical witchcraft took place for this to happen, because it was the exact same set of steps I had tried 25 times before. My only point in this story is to say it would probably be worth a shot creating a support case with their Azure team, and being a squeaky wheel, in the behemoth cog that is Microsoft, that gets the grease.

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

#123

Post by brigandish » Sat, Feb 25, 2023, 9:14 AM UTC

zamnos wrote: post #61

Brian_K_White wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Microsoft caring so little about what they do to their users IS malice.

How does that work? Is there some evil villian at Microsoft, twirling his mustache maniacally laughing himself to sleep because Mr Jeff here can't create an Azure app? This is a case for Hanlon's razor.

If we take the legal definition of malice then it might. I like this definition of malice[1]:

> malice is a condition of the mind which shows a heart regardless of social duty and fatally bent on mischief, the existence of which is inferred from acts committed or words spoken.

Negligence and recklessness are often considered acts of malice, especially when stemming from wilful blindness.

The mischief here is the problem with the account, we (those commenting on this page) have no confidence in Microsoft to improve it (they are fatally bent), as they clearly don't consider it a social duty and are surely wilfully blind to it. Does anyone here think they want to know, let alone care?

[1] https://thelawdictionary.org/malice/

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

#124

Post by vasco » Sat, Feb 25, 2023, 9:15 AM UTC

AstixAndBelix wrote: post #48

gchadwick wrote: post #26

Auth with MS accounts is a giant mess. When I was a city councillor I had a corporate O365 account from the council (used for council email and virtual meetings over teams) and simply trying to sign out of the thing or switch to another account was always fraught (I've got a personal account that's basically just to associate my windows license with and a work account used for azure access). You'd often end up in a s…

I mean, this sounds to me exactly like what happens when trying to mix normal Google accounts and Google Workspace ones, especially if the admin enabling all the service is not yourself. It's not just Microsoft, this is a problem all these service providers have because they can't cope with hybrid use

With Google you change the ID in the URL and you're in whatever account you want. All the urls usually have /u/ where ID starts at 0 with the first account you're logged in into, 1 the second etc.

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

#125

Post by alanfranz » Sat, Feb 25, 2023, 9:16 AM UTC

kl343 wrote: post #106

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 usin…

> he would have received an invitation to join the school's Azure AD tenant as a guest/external user.

He explicitly claims he didn’t, by the way.

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

#126

Post by Strom » Sat, Feb 25, 2023, 9:17 AM UTC

visarga wrote: post #65

amatecha wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, that shit is why I took a brand-new NVIDIA Shield back to the store immediately after getting it home - it literally cannot be used without signing into a Google account. I bought it thinking, "hey nice, I can use this 4K Android home theatre device without Google being involved, since it's from NVIDIA and thus hopefully free of all that crap". I even did my homework on this: no material included with the produ…

> and finally found a singular customer support page that happens to mention it That's the kind of results Google should be surfacing, but it lost the game, it is so useless now for precision searching.

> That's the kind of results Google should be surfacing

Indeed and when I try it, it does surface it when I search for Does Nvidia Shield require an Android account? [1] For comparison, ChatGPT also gets it right. [2]

--

[1] https://imgur.com/a/cLpFj6i

[2] https://imgur.com/a/x6AP0jf

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

#127

Post by iplist » Sat, Feb 25, 2023, 9:18 AM UTC

ccouzens wrote: post #120

tacker2000 wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was looking at a media center/gaming emulation device and to be honest i dont see the benefit of these android based TV devices or Apple TV anymore. You can buy a good mini-pc for a couple hundred bucks and its much more powerful and flexible. You can run windows or linux etc and hook up any keyboard, controller, remote, and do whatever you like.

I'd be interested to hear how you'd get the usability to be as good as an operating system designed to be used with a remote running apps designed to be run with a remote. Having to use a mouse and keyboard is a pain point for me when I use my desktop on my TV from the couch. For the mouse I use the trackpad on a ps5 controller, so the mouse isn't so bad. Possibly you could: * Not require passwords for everyday opera…

I've been running Kodi for over a decade now. It starts on boot, so all I have to do is start the desktop. Remote works with an open source Anroid app, it also allows streaming from Kodi to your phone and vice versa. Youtube works fine, never tried Disney+/Netflix, I'm not sure that's possible.

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

#128

Post by AstixAndBelix » Sat, Feb 25, 2023, 9:20 AM UTC

vasco wrote: post #124

AstixAndBelix wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean, this sounds to me exactly like what happens when trying to mix normal Google accounts and Google Workspace ones, especially if the admin enabling all the service is not yourself. It's not just Microsoft, this is a problem all these service providers have because they can't cope with hybrid use

With Google you change the ID in the URL and you're in whatever account you want. All the urls usually have /u/ where ID starts at 0 with the first account you're logged in into, 1 the second etc.

But what happens when you are using a Google product not served from the browser?

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

#129

Post by richdougherty » Sat, Feb 25, 2023, 9:21 AM UTC

A few years ago I got an email saying that an unknown Microsoft account had been renamed from one of my email addresses to a new email address I don't own.

It appears that someone was able to link an MS account to my email with no verification, then rename the account, again with no verification.

Best case is that it's someone who used my email as a recovery email for their MS account and changed it. But with the mess of MS accounts, I'm always nervous they've got some residual control of my real account which is also linked to that email.

Unfortunately I've never been able to get confirmation from MS that things are OK. There are plenty of questions about this particular renaming issue on the web, but no answers.

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

#130

Post by skissane » Sat, Feb 25, 2023, 9:22 AM UTC

ly3xqhl8g9 wrote: post #117

Strom wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Edited. I just didn't even bothered; given the trend, probably Windows 12 or 13 will close the loopholes.

They can never “close the loopholes” entirely, because there are customers that want machines with zero access to public Internet (embedded systems, national security, etc), where a Microsoft account is an absolute non-starter. Closing all the loopholes would be abandoning those market segments (many of which are already trending towards Linux/etc anyway)

I suppose they might make it mandatory unless you have some special version of Windows which is hard to buy (like LTSC). But make it too hard they risk that market. Anyway, now bypassing it involves opening a command prompt window, only the more technical users will do so, and that’s a small enough minority they probably aren’t missing much.