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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

#41

Post by aceazzameen »

ryanjshaw wrote: post #19
LeonB wrote: post #5

The way Microsoft accounts work is almost completely opaque to users. I’ve been in similar scenarios — the switch directory or switch organisation technique usually worked for me - but wasn’t enough for this person. They never really give you enough information to tell what’s going on… maybe it’s a security risk to have consumers who are anything other than bewildered Kafkerian characters struggling against a faceles…

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…

Setting up my kids to play on a realms account is horrid experience! And nevermind explaining how to do it to the parents of my kids' friends. Most of the kids still haven't managed to get on.

Also parental controls seems to suck in general on most services. Nintendo Switch seems to get it right for the most part.

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

#42

Post by theK »

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…

Yeah, the identity side of MS products is really dysfunctional. Every time I try to use teams or azure it ends up in hours of finding out the right procedure to log in or switch an account effectively.

And then you get the people asking naively "why are you getting so mad at them"...

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

#43

Post by LeonB »

ryanjshaw wrote: post #19
LeonB wrote: post #5

The way Microsoft accounts work is almost completely opaque to users. I’ve been in similar scenarios — the switch directory or switch organisation technique usually worked for me - but wasn’t enough for this person. They never really give you enough information to tell what’s going on… maybe it’s a security risk to have consumers who are anything other than bewildered Kafkerian characters struggling against a faceles…

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…

I witnessed an egregious bug once - where logging in with one users name and a different users 2FA let me in. I just looked for my notes on it and can’t find them. I’m happy for you not to take my word on it other than to say — I concur that there are some egregious bugs in this area!

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

#44

Post by asddubs »

Liquix wrote: post #31
oefnak wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You didn't have a choice, right?

Correct. If you didn't mind having a Mojang account (small, indie, Swedish company; respectable privacy policy) but would prefer not to create a Microsoft account, your money is as good as gone and there is no way to play the game officially.

if you just want to play offline, the prism launcher still lets you authenticate using the old mojang accounts. (which is not to contradict your claim, as it's not an official launcher).

I held out for a really long time, but a friend wanted to play minecraft with me so I finally caved. If they ask me to add a phone number I'll probably just abandon the account though, and look into piracy of the game I purchased.

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

#45

Post by asddubs »

zamnos wrote: post #11
jackjeff wrote: post #7

My rule of thumb is to NEVER use a Microsoft account for anything unless I’m forced to. And then I’ll create a brand new account for each use case. I so regret converting my Minecraft account. The old Mojang stuff was so much more reliable.

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

just like google, it might randomly lock you out based on heuristics or ask you to add a phone number to proceed.

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

#46

Post by aprilnya »

LeonB wrote: post #8
LeonB wrote: post #5

The way Microsoft accounts work is almost completely opaque to users. I’ve been in similar scenarios — the switch directory or switch organisation technique usually worked for me - but wasn’t enough for this person. They never really give you enough information to tell what’s going on… maybe it’s a security risk to have consumers who are anything other than bewildered Kafkerian characters struggling against a faceles…

Now, if Microsoft bought Atlassian — that would be absolute theoretical maximum limit of peak confusion when logging into an app. “Warning: You are about to login to Microsoft Atlassian Fogbugz Trello. Have you cleared sufficient space in your calendar, notified your next of kin, put your affairs in order, and taken your sedatives?”

I’m gonna have nightmares about this

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

#47

Post by ly3xqhl8g9 »

theK wrote: post #42
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…

Yeah, the identity side of MS products is really dysfunctional. Every time I try to use teams or azure it ends up in hours of finding out the right procedure to log in or switch an account effectively. And then you get the people asking naively "why are you getting so mad at them"...

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.

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

#48

Post by AstixAndBelix »

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

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

#49

Post by b800h »

ryanjshaw wrote: post #19
LeonB wrote: post #5

The way Microsoft accounts work is almost completely opaque to users. I’ve been in similar scenarios — the switch directory or switch organisation technique usually worked for me - but wasn’t enough for this person. They never really give you enough information to tell what’s going on… maybe it’s a security risk to have consumers who are anything other than bewildered Kafkerian characters struggling against a faceles…

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…

The switch over the Microsoft login for Minecraft was so bad that I just gave up and got the kids using MineTest instead.

And MS login for work is a complete shambles. I have to do a tactical login to Outlook with a different work account to switch login when I try to use Azure as that's the only obvious way to move to a different org account. It's horrible.

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

#50

Post by AstixAndBelix »

ryanjshaw wrote: post #19
LeonB wrote: post #5

The way Microsoft accounts work is almost completely opaque to users. I’ve been in similar scenarios — the switch directory or switch organisation technique usually worked for me - but wasn’t enough for this person. They never really give you enough information to tell what’s going on… maybe it’s a security risk to have consumers who are anything other than bewildered Kafkerian characters struggling against a faceles…

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…

Couldn't you buy Microsoft Store gift cards so you can use your kid's account to keep the subscription active while not using your credit card directly?
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