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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

#171

Post by Scarblac »

skissane wrote: post #130
ly3xqhl8g9 wrote: post #117

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…

> Closing all the loopholes would be abandoning those market segments (many of which are already trending towards Linux/etc anyway)

Sounds more likely to me that they'll just abandon those market segments.

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

#172

Post by notpushkin »

hkt wrote: post #113
bboygravity wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The lost hours are totally invisible (most companies wouldn't even allow you to report them. they don't WANT to see them) and the alternative world without lost hours with more productivity can also not be imagined by those in charge. For all it's terrible bugs and login issues, is there even alterative with similar functionality that would be as "user friendly" (as in: non-tech people would know how to use it as wel…

OSX seems fine for most people where I've worked. For the truly intractable Windows addict, maybe ReactOS? https://reactos.org/

I think Linux + Wine should be fine for most people (with a little guidance, of course).

ReactOS isn't stable enough even in a VM right now – but the progress is nice, and I hope it will be a viable alternative for embedded applications (like ATMs or factory automation stuff). Maybe consumer use one day, too?

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

#173

Post by throwaway290 »

emeril wrote: post #90
ryanjshaw wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Try having a kid and segregating funds for them while paying for their Xbox Game Pass and a Minecraft Realm with your account. I have 25 years of Windows software development experience and I was almost reduced to tears just trying to understand what I'm even trying to accomplish. Realms is still in some kind of half subscribed, half not subscribed state and it still asks for my account's PIN for purchases but actual…

my general approach to this garbage is to just keep making new accounts/email addresses (on my domain) for each purpose this keeps everything from being comingled at the expense of maintaining all of those credentials also, as a bonus, if you organize this by subdomain you can sort your email by it automatically since most emails from this stuff don't really need to hit your inbox

Until they ban all of your alts when some obscure ToS sentence about creating multiple accounts starts being enforced (or one of them gets taken over when you don't pay close enough attention) and if you happen to use any of them for anything critical you come to HN complaining how MS just killed your life or business. I truly think that's what happens behind the scenes of half of those cry for help posts

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

#174

Post by thrdbndndn »

andyjohnson0 wrote: post #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…

You can have multiple OneDrive accounts on the same computer, I personally never have issues with it (I have three).

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

#175

Post by sumedh »

submeta wrote: post #105

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.

> numerous domains including msn, microsoft, live.com, and others that I cannot recall.

Dont forget the og domain, hotmail.com

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

#176

Post by AndrewDavis »

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 (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.

Then they do absolutely crazy weird things!

I recently got a new laptop. My account is `adavis@.com`, my user name on my old laptop using that account is `adavis`.

What did Windows 11 do when I create my user on laptop. Oh it makes my user name `adavi`, yes it truncated my username.

After scouring the internet, trying a few different things to rename my account to no avail, nothing worked! Until I found a command to bring up an account management window that looked dated to the win 2k era ish (and can't be found via any settings window). It allowed me to create a local account with the name `adavis`. I then logged into it, deleted my `adavi` account then was able to associate my new local account with my Microsoft account.

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

#177

Post by wazoox »

hkt wrote: post #110
ly3xqhl8g9 wrote: post #100

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…

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

I haven't used windows for 20 years and yesterday I had a teams teleconference using Firefox on Linux. It works noticeably more poorly than most similar systems (jit.si for the win) but it works.

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

#178

Post by smallstepforman »

fcatalan wrote: post #37

My kids' school and high school use Teams for some stuff. I have to use it occasionally for work too. The thing is that's nigh impossible to simply log out as one user and back in as another, so we have to take a lot of care of who used this or that device last. And don't get me started on the nightmare that is dealing with Minecraft accounts older than the Mojang acquisition. It's not only Microsoft. Trying to subsc…

My son gave me a hard time for Valorant secure boot requirement on Windows 11 (but not 10). As a triple boot user (Haiku and Linux), secure boot is a no go on my box, since I reboot frequently.

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

#179

Post by disgruntledphd2 »

neodon wrote: 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 use separate browsers for work and personal. On a work machine, my personal stuff will be in Firefox and my work stuff in Chrome/Safari/whatever.

It's just easier for me to manage that way. That being said, my work google account is connected to my personal phone which is probably gonna mess me up at some point.

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

#180

Post by ashgoyal »

This is a giant mess. Frankly, i don't understand how they architected it. If i open a word, excel or ppt document from another companies SharePoint because they added me as a guest, Microsoft promptly signs me out of the desktop office 365 apps and then says that i am using unlicensed office365.

How was this missed when designing the security and authentication systems?? This is basic foundational stuff!

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