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Microsoft is employing dark patterns to goad users into paying for storage?

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Re: Microsoft is employing dark patterns to goad users into paying for storage?

#141

Post by Loocid »

tredre3 wrote: post #83
jmcphers wrote: post #24

Google is no better. My family mostly uses iPhones, and on a big extended family vacation, I suggested we use Google Photos to create a shared album to document the trip. Everyone installed the Google Photos app on their iPhone so they could contribute... which resulted in all of them having their email accounts disabled . What happened? Google Photos on the iPhone backs up all your photos by default, and, like Micro…

> The minute Google Photos was installed, it started backing up photos Just to be clear: It will ask you before doing it. If you refuse, it will ask you again and again and again. Sometimes with a slightly different prompt. Until you accidentally say yes. But it does ask you. Even though I agree with your overall conclusion that people should avoid google photos, this moment should also be a learning experience for y…

I've lost count the number of times by wife has accidently agreed to store all her google photos on the cloud then filled up her account. The prompts are very good at making you ~seem~ like you need to do it.

Re: Microsoft is employing dark patterns to goad users into paying for storage?

#142

Post by albedoa »

slater wrote: post #134
albedoa wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would love to hear the excuse that the mods have for this title change. Good luck to them!

Excuse? They don't need an excuse, "How Microsoft abuses its users" isn't very descriptive. The edited title reduces the heat and gives more info.

[flagged]

Re: Microsoft is employing dark patterns to goad users into paying for storage?

#143

Post by jkaplowitz »

antonvs wrote: post #50
kn100 wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh and another fun thing! I eventually just emptied the OneDrive so Microsoft would stop bothering me. This was maybe six months ago or so. Microsoft confirms I am storing nothing there. Just a week or two ago I got yet another email begging for money because my OneDrive was apparently full. It was a genuine email, I went as far as checking the headers for SPF/DKIM. When I signed into onedrive, still empty!

I suppose if you’re not paying them, your storage limit is zero, so if you have zero bytes there you’ve reached max capacity.

Pretty sure the free limit is 5 GB, at least for personal Microsoft accounts, not zero.

Re: Microsoft is employing dark patterns to goad users into paying for storage?

#144

Post by zuminator »

debugnik wrote: post #41
jmcphers wrote: post #24

Google is no better. My family mostly uses iPhones, and on a big extended family vacation, I suggested we use Google Photos to create a shared album to document the trip. Everyone installed the Google Photos app on their iPhone so they could contribute... which resulted in all of them having their email accounts disabled . What happened? Google Photos on the iPhone backs up all your photos by default, and, like Micro…

> it started backing up photos until the paltry free tier was reached How could everyone fill their 15 GiB quota when IIRC by default it only backups the camera roll with lossy compression? Also I've never heard of accounts getting disabled for filling the quota.

It's not just the photos that you take going forward, but all the photos you already have stored on the device.

Re: Microsoft is employing dark patterns to goad users into paying for storage?

#145

Post by slater »

albedoa wrote: post #142
slater wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Excuse? They don't need an excuse, "How Microsoft abuses its users" isn't very descriptive. The edited title reduces the heat and gives more info.

[flagged]

Okeydokey, then.

Re: Microsoft is employing dark patterns to goad users into paying for storage?

#147

Post by BobbyTables2 »

kn100 wrote: post #25
kn100 wrote: post #20

I got caught out by exactly this, and I'm not exactly tech illiterate. what made it even more annoying is by the time I'd realised what had happened, it was practically impossible to get the files back out of OneDrive (since I decided that this was enough Windows for me, and went back to Linux), since the webui does NOT handle downloading lots of small files well, and you just end up getting a partially complete zip…

Oh and another fun thing! I eventually just emptied the OneDrive so Microsoft would stop bothering me. This was maybe six months ago or so. Microsoft confirms I am storing nothing there. Just a week or two ago I got yet another email begging for money because my OneDrive was apparently full. It was a genuine email, I went as far as checking the headers for SPF/DKIM. When I signed into onedrive, still empty!

Isn’t there a recycle bin?

Apple has something similar. One has to delete out of the hidden deleted items area — unless they want to wait a full month!

Re: Microsoft is employing dark patterns to goad users into paying for storage?

#148

Post by lostlogin »

cromka wrote: post #62
kn100 wrote: post #20

I got caught out by exactly this, and I'm not exactly tech illiterate. what made it even more annoying is by the time I'd realised what had happened, it was practically impossible to get the files back out of OneDrive (since I decided that this was enough Windows for me, and went back to Linux), since the webui does NOT handle downloading lots of small files well, and you just end up getting a partially complete zip…

I had same exact experience with macOS and iCloud. macOS by default enables offloading Documents to cloud, transparently. Problem is if you try to get those files back to store them offline, it gets very tricky very quickly with ambiguous verbiage and lengthy process that you never actually know status of. I ended up losing some files as a result, which came as a total shock to me. I was already in the process of mov…

These is some weird bs there and it automagically sends everything up.

Despite stuff being placed on the drive, it decides to upload them and only have a cloud copy. I thought maybe it was me that caused this, then it happened to a family member overnight.

It’s painful.

Re: Microsoft is employing dark patterns to goad users into paying for storage?

#150

Post by NoMoreNicksLeft »

jmcphers wrote: post #24

Google is no better. My family mostly uses iPhones, and on a big extended family vacation, I suggested we use Google Photos to create a shared album to document the trip. Everyone installed the Google Photos app on their iPhone so they could contribute... which resulted in all of them having their email accounts disabled . What happened? Google Photos on the iPhone backs up all your photos by default, and, like Micro…

>I'll never recommend Google Photos to anyone ever again.

I try to pry myself away from Google. I've given up the Google Maps app, for the arguably slightly-less-worse Apple Maps. I'm now 95/5 Firefox/Chrome, but I still need Chrome for some things that simply do not work well on Firefox. Gmail is nearly impossible, if I had 6 months I might try to host my own email... but I don't even know how to avoid it. I can't NOT HAVE email, ISPs don't offer that as part of their internet service anymore. You can't host it without jumping through spam hoops meant to keep everyone but Gmail out of email. And I try to use DDG, but it's just abysmal compared to Google search in its heyday... even now, Google search is often slightly better.

All of it's just some tarbaby trap, and now that I'm stuck I can't get unstuck.

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