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My daughter's school took over my personal Microsoft account

jeffgeerling.com

161–170 of 490 posts

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

#161
post #12

Despite 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…

Maybe, but it's a behaviour that shouldn't be possible to happen. If I have a personal account it's my account, and should be considered distinct from the account of a school/organization, there shouldn't be the possibility that joining one of them will limit what my account could do.

That is a personal account shouldn't even be possibly converted into an AzureAD one: if you want it's another account, with another email and another password. This possibility of mistake should never happen.

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

#162
I had an interesting situation a while back where my then corporate login appeared amongst my personal Microsoft accounts as possible options to log into upon installing Microsoft office iOS apps on a personal device - given that org’s corporate policies don’t allow logging in that way I could fathom how it was appearing (it might have been linked to once trying to use Authenticator for 2FA) but it was a bit odd seeing it as a prompt on downloading a fresh iOS Excel. It seems to have stopped now but was a bit odd!

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

#163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 sp…

[dead]

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

#164

This really goes to show what depending on online authentication from a large corp can do. Even worse, Microsoft is now trying to force online accounts onto Windows machines. Google already does it with Android. Which means for some reason if you lose access to your email, you are locked out of not only your online accounts but your local devices also. We really need to separate authentication from services and devic…

Do you mean when using Google email? I don't see how being locked out of my personal email would lead to me being locked out of my Android, even if I would log into Google Play Services with an account (which I have not but let's go with the common lay person scenario).

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

#165

This really goes to show what depending on online authentication from a large corp can do. Even worse, Microsoft is now trying to force online accounts onto Windows machines. Google already does it with Android. Which means for some reason if you lose access to your email, you are locked out of not only your online accounts but your local devices also. We really need to separate authentication from services and devic…

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…

Good for you.

Nvidia Shield was great, but they upgraded the user interface and shat ads all over it.

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

#166
post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Well I still have a non-signed-in local account on my Windows 11 Pro install, but of course every time I boot up I get a full screen “finish setting up your device” before I’m allowed to sign in. The only options are “continue” and “remind me in three days”. Better yet, I once clicked on continue by accident and the computer hang for three minutes before I shut it down. Now I only reboot when the machine BSODs, which…

https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/turn-off-notific...

You're welcome.

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

#167

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

I've got a number of Google accounts, two work ones (associated with different domains with distinct permissions and access to things, using drive, gdocs, Gmail and GCP with both) and a number of personal ones (some of which are associated with a Google workspace that I use for email under my personal domain) and it all works just fine for the most part. Groups and GCP console can sometimes get stuck on one account but Chrome with profiles can side step that one.

Doing the same thing with MS accounts has been an utter nightmare by comparison.

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

#168
post #108

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…

For Firefox users, Multi Account Containers are definitely the way to go.

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-GB/firefox/addon/multi-account...

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

#169
post #108

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…

I take the next step, Vivaldi for personal and Chrome for work profiles. Firefox for non important profiles.

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

#170
My work laptop has a weird combination of a personal microsoft account that (I think) is linked to the windows licence, and a corporate account that is linked to O365, sharepoint, etc. Office works, as does OneDrive [1], but I've never been able to access SharePoint (probably not a bad thing). Azure just doesn't work for me, and even Microsoft support couldnt figure out why.

I'm usually pretty positive about Msft but their identity stuff is a mess.

[1] except that I have two OneDrives that appear to form a Venn diagram with a partial intersection that i can never quite figure out....

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