Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

My daughter's school took over my personal Microsoft account

jeffgeerling.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

271–280 of 490 posts

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

#271

Post by mkup »

skissane wrote: post #213
Meph504 wrote: post #209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They actually already make a special version of windows for those purposes and it isn't available to the open market. Government editions that have no telemetry, advertising, or integrated cloud products at all. I know it is a pipe dream but I wish they could be forced to sell this to the general public.

Are you talking about LTSC or something else? I have looked into buying LTSC. Apparently you need a business (I own a “shelf” company which has never done anything, but legally it counts), and a Microsoft volume license agreement. I looked into the later. Supposedly there is this trick where you order all these useless-but-cheap Identity Manager CALs to cheaply meet the minimum order requirement for a volume license.…

I am not Meph504, but I suppose they meant either Windows Enterprise G or Windows Enterprise G N editions, not Windows LTSC editions.

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

#272

Post by neither_color »

Strom wrote: post #109
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…

> 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.

The last time I tried to do this it was impossible to sign into Office or Xbox on that same PC without logging into a Microsoft Account which subsequently takes over your local login. No way around it other than to not use those apps at all or only running office through a browser. It went like:

Install flight simulator on a Win10 PC with local login only and launch -> sign into an xbox account -> after you enter your name and password, you get a dialog box where you have to agree to sign your Microsoft Account on that PC with two dark pattern options that lead to the same result.

I couldn't find any combination of group policy editor, registry, and services.msc around it. You can either close it and lose access to the game you just paid for, or proceed and then you get your account signed into email and a bunch of other crap you dont want and have to spend hours getting rid of all traces of that account in your system(but it's never 100% gone). Only way to bypass it is to buy the game through Steam.

Between MacOs Linux and Microsoft, Microsoft has the last respect for you as a user and nobody should use it if they don't have to.

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

#273

Post by layer8 »

denton-scratch wrote: post #259
j_mo wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not to support Windows, but what are you doing that requires restarts multiple times per day? I leave my personal Windows 10 desktop running for about a month at a time so I don't have to reopen 5 different windows and arrange them across three screens for uni work every evening. It works fine. Mind you, if it was a Mac I'd not even have to reopen or arrange them after restarting the machine - they'd still be there.…

> I leave my personal Windows 10 desktop running for about a month at a time My Win10 Home desktop downloads updates when I'm not looking - and sometimes when I'm actually using the thing - and then reboots all on its own. I have no control over this; there have been occasions when the reboot has happened while I was working. It happens roughly once a week.

You can use Reboot-Blocker to prevent that: https://udse.de/reboot-blocker/

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

#274

Post by russfink »

ccouzens wrote: post #87
ly3xqhl8g9 wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Solution: run Windows in a VM, one machine per account, nuke it from orbit when-not-if something goes awry. Hundreds of hours of frustration prevented from a system that is not even able to have the same UI across all its windows.

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.

And in an incognito window, too.

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

#275

Post by dybber »

mastazi wrote: post #193
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…

> Auth with MS accounts is a giant mess. It is indeed a giant mess. If you go to live.com and click on the hamburger icon at the top, then under 'Apps' click on the "To-Do" app, you will be asked to enter the password for your work account, even though you are on live.com, not on office.com, and you are currently logged in with your personal account. The only way to get past this is to click "use another account" the…

Same on Gmail. I’m not logged in on my private account as I don’t use it anymore, but it always suggests to log me in on the private account when accessing, even though I am logged in on a corporate account, which is the only one I’m actively using at the moment. Silly.

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

#276

Post by LightHugger »

Alphaeus wrote: post #28
zamnos wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The old Mojang stuff was so much more reliable. In what way? Does the microsoft.com login system go down often?

The Mojang accounts weren't great for security. No 2FA or anything (just security questions), and if you lost your account / it was stolen, you were pretty stuffed. The only way to recover it was to present the transaction ID of your purchase of the game to support, which most people don't have and you were never told to keep. I saw lots of people get permanently locked out of their accounts. I guess it also doesn't…

The mojang accounts were superior in every way in terms of security. Hahha, microsoft is a huge attack surface. And with microsoft, you also need to secure your account against microsoft itself, which isn't easy, they will randomly extort previously unknown personal information like phone numbers to access your account. If you only have 1 number, and its linked to a different account, you just lost your account.

I don't understand why people think a microsoft account could ever possibly be more secure.

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

#277

Post by eric-burel »

I couldn't find the link back to an issue I've filed about auth in Teams, but certain authentication issues are specific to using iOS and do not exist on Windows... Namely, when invited in an organization, I cannot connect because I have a free personal account, but only on iOS. Windows and web are ok. Support tried to sell me a paid account, of course. As a freelancer I've lost a full day of work at the beggining of the pandemic due to this, thankfully I now have only one client (a school too) using Teams so I don't have to switch accounts.

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

#278

Post by lostlogin »

j_mo wrote: post #199
lostlogin wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m blown away by this. I’ve come back to a full MS stack after years away and it’s grim. Machine shave to be restarted once or more times per day. My personal MacBook is restarted every month or two. I used to moan about Apple’s software quality, but maybe we are actually in Isaac Asimov’s accelerating decline to a dark age.

Not to support Windows, but what are you doing that requires restarts multiple times per day? I leave my personal Windows 10 desktop running for about a month at a time so I don't have to reopen 5 different windows and arrange them across three screens for uni work every evening. It works fine. Mind you, if it was a Mac I'd not even have to reopen or arrange them after restarting the machine - they'd still be there.…

> what are you doing that requires restarts multiple times per day?

Outlook, Teams, Chrome, COMRAD (radiology RIS), Spotify and InteleViewer (DICOM viewer). Without restarts Spotify stops working, the software loses track of what day it is (it assumes the day prior) and things get slow or unresponsive.

Maybe it’s the software and not the OS. I run all those except COMRAD on a Mac ok though.

Mac and multi display and window location is a special hell. My father is a heavy Photohop user and palette organisation is a daily battle with multi screen. When screens wake up windows and palettes reorganise if the system detects one screen and not two briefly. It’s a big drain on productivity.

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

#279

Post by kissgyorgy »

Karellen wrote: post #210
kissgyorgy wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Because it's cheap." Lots of "leaders" don't see much further than that...

If that were the reason, the year of Linux on the desktop would have happened 20 years ago.

Linux was not and is not cheap at all. Downloading it might be free, but the initial price doesn't matter compared the cost of running it for a whole organization.

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

#280

Post by alfnor »

Dalewyn wrote: post #196
Kwpolska wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I go even further, corporate laptop for work, personal laptop for personal stuff.

A dedicated laptop solely for work is basic CYA and good practice, everyone should do it. Yes, even if work doesn't provide a laptop for work purposes and you need to furnish your own. Same goes for phones, etc. It might be expensive to maintain dedicated hardware to cordon off work from everything else, but it's still cheaper than if you hadn't and the inevitable biological waste impacts the aerodynamic wake generat…

I used to run Qubes on my laptop with one dedicated VM for school. However, I had to change to Windows for a mutlitude of reasons. Might work for some though, and certainly cheaper than dedicated devices.
Post reply on HN