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Ask HN: My Microsoft account has been suspended by Microsoft without details
My entire Microsoft account has been suspended, due to the violation of the Terms, by Microsoft, and without any further details. At the time of incident, I was not doing with the account or anything digital, and rather was cooking/eating dinner, when my computer received a notification about a problem with my Microsoft account.
I am not given any other options than to Contact Support about it, which I did yesterday and got an answer today that tells me nothing more than the very few that I know:
> Microsoft disabled access to the account due to a serious violation of the Microsoft Services Agreement https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/servicesagreement. As stated in the Microsoft Services Agreement, you will no longer be able to access any Services that require Microsoft account. For any subscriptions associated with the account, Microsoft will immediately cease charging the credit card on file for recurring charges. [...] Pursuant to our terms, we cannot reactivate your account, nor provide details as to why it was closed. This represents Microsoft’s final communication regarding this account.
I hope that I am not violating any other terms by sharing these messages. I do it out of frustration to know what exactly I might have done to deserve this, something more detailed than "you have violated our Terms as you eat your dinner", because without knowing which action of mine caused this, I either;
a) Will be unable to understand my mistake and not repeat it,
b) Will fear out of doing nearly everything and refrain from them, such as using a VPN on Amazon's AWS at Ohio, which I am sincerely suspicious of.
Microsoft's own way of justice is against the legal systems in all the modern countries, which always makes sure that the accused knows their faults, as one of their rights, and for the benefit of the accused not getting involved in such acts for a second time, for that they this time will know.
- ThoAppelsin 8y agoThis account had been my oldest digital property, which I had been using for probably over 10 years now. I haven't been using it any differently than before, so now I am left absolutely clueless with a sizeable digital property of mine being lost. I could have kept a copy of everything and not got all-in to the OneDrive with the On-Demand feature, but I don't know what I could have done to not lose 3.5 out of 4 years of pre-paid (required) Office 365 University service, because Microsoft simply does not tell.
- brudgers 8y agoHow have you been using it?
- ThoAppelsin 8y agoSending/receiving emails from it on Hotmail. As a cloud storage to my files on OneDrive. To prepare documents, tables, presentations on Office. To listen to music when there was Groove. Logging into my two Windows 10 computers. To purchase/download software to my convenience on the Store. While signing in to other websites, either using my email, or via Microsoft sign-in. Probably just like everybody else.
- PascLeRasc 8y agoSo what Linux distros are you considering?
- Animats 8y agoYes. I refuse to go to Windows 10 because of that sort of thing, but some day, Windows 7 will no longer be usable. Running my Android phone without a Google account keeps getting tougher with each update. The jaws are closing. Of course, Linux has a different set of problems. I just spent most of a day getting audio to work again on Linux after accidentally turning on HDMI audio. This is the 16-step procedure for fixing "no sound" problems in Ubuntu Linux.[1] It's a cut and paste of ten years of hacks for fixing sound problems. (I took a stab at writing a sane audio troubleshooting procedure.[2] It doesn't have to be that awful.) [1] https://help.ubuntu.com/community/SoundTroubleshootingProcedure https://help.ubuntu.com/community/SoundTroubleshootingProced... [2] https://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=2397280 https://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=2397280
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- StudentStuff 8y ago
- Tomte 8y agoMS won‘t tell you, we don‘t know. End of story. What more is there to say?
- endorphone 8y agoGenerally when someone posts a story like this on HN it's both as a warning to others about what could happen to them, and also in hopes that someone from the source company touches base or clarifies. It's seldom the end of the story.
- BjoernKW 8y agoWhile this certainly is not exactly a decent way of dealing with people and a less than stellar customer experience, Microsoft isn't the judicial system but a private entity. This being a civil law affair there are no formal charges and you're not accused of anything but merely (and potentially ) in breach of contract. If you sue them they'll have to reveal what they think you did. Other than that you're probably only entitled to access to your data so you can transfer it to another provider, as well as maybe a prorated refund if applicable (and you'd probably have to hire a lawyer for that, too, because they possibly won't answer any further inquiries on your part). You mentioned a university licence. Many vendors explicitly prohibit usage of such licences for purposes other than educational ones. This might be the cause of your problem, for example if you used your account for hosting a commercial application on Microsoft Azure.
- ThoAppelsin 8y agoI did not use my account for any commercial purposes, and I don't have much to say for the rest, read them like "you are a poor customer, who won't be able to afford, and should not afford a lawyer to recover your $100-300 loss, for your own interest". Sad that this is reality, or someone perpetuates this fact in such an acceptant manner.
- BjoernKW 8y agoI don't endorse this behaviour at all I'm merely stating the facts (probably as outlined in the contract you've entered with Microsoft). If you feel you've been wronged you should certainly hire a lawyer. At the very least then you'll know what it is they think you did. Another option would be talking to a consumer organization (not sure if this is applicable because a university licence might not qualify as a consumer licence). Other than that: Caveat emptor. I know this sounds trite and doesn't really help in your current situation but when you entered that contract you very likely agreed to the terms Microsoft now uses against you.
- emodendroket 8y ago> Other than that: Caveat emptor. I know this sounds trite and doesn't really help in your current situation but when you entered that contract you very likely agreed to the terms Microsoft now uses against you. Yes of course, he should have simply not used e-mail.
- patrickg_zill 8y agoThey can claim that they are following the law, but that doesn't mean they actually are... If you have a university based license then I would suggest you complain about the suspension of service with your university. Possibly the person who manages the business relationship with Microsoft has contacts they can talk to. Also: keep backups outside of the Microsoft ecosystem.
- ThoAppelsin 8y agoIt is my personal over-10-years-old account. I merely bought a university package that is for sale on Microsoft, using this account after getting registered to my university.
- pnathan 8y agoAre you a current student then?
- ThoAppelsin 8y agoNo, I have graduated by the end of last Spring semester. I purchased the product while I still was a student last year. I will become Master's student once again in within two months.
- slenk 8y agoCould the university have notified Microsoft that you were currently not enrolled, and thats why your account was suspended?
- patrickg_zill 8y agoI would still see if I could get the university involved. A request from a university will get more attention than from an individual, since a) Microsoft wants to be responsive to education b) they are selling anywhere from several hundred to several thousand of licenses (depending on your university's size).
- NullPrefix 8y agoIf you use the account on Win10, do they lock you out from your whole computer?
- ThoAppelsin 8y agoI just tried to see if I am able to log-in using Microsoft account, and I was.
- jimnotgym 8y agoThis is a stark reminder about the dangers of signing your life over to saas. If you are in the EU you might want invoke your right to an electronic, transferable copy under GDPR
- flyinghamster 8y agoWhat's especially infuriating is the dark pattern that began with Windows 8 and has become worse in Windows 10: hiding that you can create a local account instead of using a Microsoft clown, er, cloud account. The more I see things like this happening, the less I want to entrust anything important to MS, Google, Amazon, etc.
- bmarquez 8y agoYes, not only does Microsoft push their cloud account for login, they also spam ads in their notification bar. Going from memory, exact words may vary: - "Install Microsoft Authenticator to log in with your phone" - "Sign up for OneDrive to protect against ransomware attacks" - "Do more with Microsoft Edge!" (this one shows up when you change your default browser) I prefer my operating system to not upsell me.
- jackhack 8y agoThere is also : "There must be a problem with your Microsoft account. Click here to fix it" alert on the notification bar. The only problem with my Microsoft account seems to be that I didn't create one. Not a problem to me, but obviously a problem at Microsoft. |But then I'm only the guy who BOUGHT the computer and deliberately avoided creating a MSFT account. What do I know? Funny how there's no "go away and never bother me again" option on that alert. more and more, Microsoft makes me feel like a visitor in my own home (computer).
- dm319 8y ago> Microsoft makes me feel like a visitor in my own home (computer). I think it started with XP. If you tried to avoid installing windows genuine advantage (by deselecting it during the update procedure), it would come up again, then come up with increased frequency. Until in my case, it somehow just started installing itself of it's own accord.
- zokier 8y agoCall them? Escalate, escalate, escalate until you get an answer. https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/4051701/global-customer-service-phone-numbers https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/4051701/global-cust...
- Gys 8y agoExactly the same thing happened to me while using Azure free tier. 2-3 y ago. It was a new account which i only used for a few days. Only to make a few test calls to their geo location api (i think). I needed that for a service that i was building. Then i got this same message. No idea why. I did get two phone calls to upgrade my account (!) but they could not explain why this happened, nor get more details. Very, very strange. I switched to Google and never looked back
- pc86 8y agoThere are dozens of stories of identical things happening to Google accounts so it's not as if they are any better.
- cerberusss 8y agoExactly. These giant companies should really only be used as interchangeable infrastructure. I have my own personal domain. At the moment, I use Google to handle my mail. If they no longer want me as a customer, I'll update my domain's MX records and move to another company.
- stefano 8y agoWhat happens if your domain registrar bans you? Is it something they can do?
- cerberusss 8y agoI guess they could, but the domain is mine and I could transfer it to another domain registrar. Some government organization could seize the domain, but that's not something I worry about.
- youseecomrade 8y agoI would be even more worried about DNS/domain hijacking if the HN stories I hear are true. Not only technical issues but social engineering of the domain ownership. Whatever you do (custom domain or not), you're always exposed.
- wnsire 8y ago>"We canno't provide details about why your account is closed and won't reactivate it" This type of behaviour should be banned by the European Union. You should be provided with the exact reason of why your account is being closed , regardless of who is the provider of the service. It's unacceptable that companies like Microsoft, Facebook, Airbnb feel entitle to behave like this knowing how critical the service provided by those companies are for some organization. Plus the fact that those suspensions are usually done automatically by an algorithm powered by Machine Learning or something similar. This type of mechanism could destroy an entire organization if the account of CEOs , CTOs, CFOs are suddenly locked down without possibility to access their emails , their contacts, their meetings and others business critical information. This is outrageous.
- hkai 8y agoYou can thank American and European governments for that. They extorted money from private companies for "due diligence violations" and now they will ban you and close your account on any smallest suspicion of financial impropriety or connections with sanctioned individuals or countries. As an example, people lost their money to PayPal and had their accounts banned because their address contained a street named after a sanctioned location. Corporations are panicking. They spend billions of dollars on due diligence now and this is the result you are seeing. They don't want to spend even more billions of dollars on fines. Obviously they can't tell you "transferring over 500 USD per month to Africa looked dodgy to us, so we closed your account". They are keeping details secret, which makes sense because next time you'd just circumvent their checks.
- morsma 8y agoThis is the correct answer.
- jstarfish 8y ago> You can thank American and European governments for that. They extorted money from private companies for "due diligence violations" and now they will ban you and close your account on any smallest suspicion of financial impropriety or connections with sanctioned individuals or countries. > As an example, people lost their money to PayPal and had their accounts banned because their address contained a street named after a sanctioned location. That is ridiculous. Modern companies have no problem Hoovering up and analyzing vast amounts of intelligence on consumers for marketing purposes. PayPal almost certainly has liasons with any number of three-letter agencies that also feed them intel related to criminal or terrorist activity. Link analysis and graph database software has reached commodity status; it's affordable and available. Directing them to do something to stop transactions between accounts known to be affiliated with terrorism is a reasonable request. If their solution to money laundering bans accounts based on something so naive as terms found in a street address, their unbounded, colossal incompetence is not the fault of any government. PayPal has never had their shit together-- run-of-the-mill fraudsters have no problem keeping accounts open, but yours will eventually be seized without notice or explanation.
- boomboomsubban 8y agoSearch for their support number and call them. While stuck on the phone, research making the jump to free software.
- znpy 8y agoMost EULAs I have been reading clearly state that the service provider can recede from the contract at any time without having to provide any explanation. This is undoubtedly unfair, but I honestly wonder: if this is even legal?
- emodendroket 8y agoIf they can force you to agree to mandatory arbitration to use their service (and in the US they can, according to the Supreme Court), this kind of stuff is peanuts.
- rabboRubble 8y agoDoes anybody know of a MS feature similar to Google Takeout? I frequently take downloads of my Google content with Google Takeout but haven't been doing the same for Microsoft. Recently started adding important content to my MS account, and probably ought to start doing the same for that service. edit: yeah, yeah, yeah all the cool kids don't use Microsoft stuff. For some of us, there may reasons we do, and I suggest this MS service might do the trick. I'm still testing what all is included in this export. UPDATE apparently this tool just exports a json file including usage information of each MS service but not the data contained within those usage sessions i.e. a file I've created in OneDrive Excel. Hmmmm.... going to continue the hunt. https://account.microsoft.com/privacy/export https://account.microsoft.com/privacy/export
- maimeowmeow 8y agoI dont think most people have microsoft accounts, or services so there is nothing to take out.
- binomialxenon 8y agoI'd wager a guess that the majority of Windows users use a Microsoft online login. Also, Office 365 and OneDrive are both widely used, and there's Skype, Xbox, and Hotmail/Live Mail/Outlook/whatever.
- maimeowmeow 8y agoThats forced integration, but logging into windows does not imply you store data on windows services. The only thing that I can see resulting in data storage is onedrive because its forced down.
- hkai 8y agoIf I know anything about corporations, that's because of a due diligence check. Your name or credit card or face matched someone else, or they thought you have connections to sanctioned countries, or your finances are dodgy. Even for spam they wouldn't block you like this right weather. It's due diligence.
- thinkingemote 8y agoWere you running any of their cloud servers? If so what were you doing on there? Were you storing files? If so what kind of files. You might find there's some kind of activity you've been doing but thought was ok, or you were storing files which got flagged for porn or copyright.
- withinrafael 8y agoDid you have pirated material in OneDrive? Did you pirate Windows, Office, or any other Microsoft software? I'm thinking content scanning or Microsoft Account telemetry.
- skt5 8y agoI don't think that this matters as much unless you've shared it & Microsoft got some sort of DMCA notice. By any chance, did you have child nudity (ex: photo of child bathing, etc.) on your OneDrive? If so, I wonder if PhotoDNA picked it up (see https://www.neowin.net/news/man-arrested-after-microsoft-finds-child-porn-on-onedrive-account https://www.neowin.net/news/man-arrested-after-microsoft-fin...).
- grezql 8y agoI hope someone from Microsoft can adress this problem asap. I have office license + 1 tb of onedrive pictures and important documents which have no other backup. Also other online accounts are tied to the microsoft account. If Microsoft shut people down without reasoning I may plan to "decentralise" my services.
- gnode 8y agoI strongly recommend you just go ahead and do so. This is like saying: if the burglars don't return this guy's stolen property soon, I might just have to start locking my doors when I go out.
- nuclearburrito 8y agoI highly recommend Fastmail. Not affiliated other than customer since 2002. Best email out there IMHO. Paid, but worth it.
- DenisM 8y agoHow is search nowadays? I left 8 years ago them because search was so bad compared to Gmail.
- nuclearburrito 8y agoSearch is great. No issues.
- mnm1 8y agoAmazon does the same thing from experience. Google too from what I've read here. This is the dark side of tech companies. In this respect they are all powerful. Makes it impossible to truly rely or trust any of their services when they did things like this. We're seeing more and more of these cases and without proper regulations, what's to stop these companies from abusing their customers? Nothing. It should really make one think twice about depending on such services, especially for running a business.
- bad_user 8y agoThe takeaway for the rest of us is that you should never depend so much on one big company. Put your eggs in multiple baskets, preferably the smaller players (but not too small, as that might mean incompetent). E.g. my email, calendar and contacts are at FastMail with my own domain, cloud storage is at Dropbox but looking to migrate to pCloud (after their recent fiasco). For notes I use Evernote, but investigating Standard Notes. I also don’t buy DRM-ed books or other products, e.g. I buy DRM-free audio books from Downpour. I have a Spotify account but I regularly buy the music I like. I have an iPhone but I’ll be damned if I’ll let Apple dictate my web browser therefore I use Firefox and apps that play along with it. My Google and Microsoft accounts are basically unused. I use Docs at times but I regularly back them up automatically. I don’t even use Google’s Search anymore. I have some apps purchased for Android but I stopped using Android for now. If they block me for anything, I couldn’t care less. These companies that have products in multiple markets are after lock-in of their users by any means necessary. Don’t fall into that trap. The alternatives cost more, but your freedom and privacy are worth it.
- emodendroket 8y agoFastmail sounds alright, but realistically whoever your e-mail provider is you're in trouble if they go away.
- kop316 8y agoThe nice thing about a custom domain however is all you have to do is repoint it to a different provider if that happens.
- vthallam 8y agoUntil your domain gets pulled off by your registar for whatever weird reason. There's no absolute way to escape, sadly.
- kop316 8y agoI agree with that, but the distribution of where you have things makes it a bit more difficult. If I have amazon hosting my domain, email, website, and I shop there, then me getting banned because they didn't like me returning too many things will affect everything else. Having my domain at No-IP, Email at fastmail, website self hosted means that Microsoft banning an account I use won't affect any of that.
- ddtaylor 8y agoThis is becoming much more common. A YouTube channel I created to poke fun at rap music was brigaded after I submitted it to a popular group on Reddit. They reported so many of my videos so quickly that before I could finish the appeal of a single community guideline I had 3 strikes and my channel was permanently deleted before I ever received any feedback or appeal.
- ballenf 8y agoCrazy. More details please, especially how long between first strike and deletion?
- ddtaylor 8y agoFirst strike: Mon, Jul 9, 2018 at 8:53 PM Second strike: Mon, Jul 9, 2018 at 10:36 PM Third strike: Mon, Jul 9, 2018 at 11:31 PM The last / third strike came with a "Your YouTube account has been terminated" and any attempts to login or view any of my videos gives a page missing and the Google account associated with it doesn't even appear in any of my menus. I don't really care that much it was a dumb joke channel I made to poke fun at how often profanity is used in rap music. The part I find pretty perplexing is that I _removed_ the profanity from the music and the channel was flagged for offensive content.
- josephorjoe 8y agoNo recourse perma ban within 3 hours? Sounds like a recipe for griefing.
- kayfox 8y agoIts great for griefing. Its also heavily automated, so the griefers can just work the system into doing it whenever they want.
- dzhiurgis 8y agoAny chance that was actually a copyright infringement?
- opportune 8y agoDid you perhaps leak an API key?
- EGreg 8y agoOnce again, this is what happens when you trust some third party organizations for simple things like storing your data, facilitating group communication, or even authenticating your very identity! Why do we do it?
- zokier 8y ago> Why do we do it? Because these sort of stories represent probably something like one in a million failure rate. That is ridiculously successful. And those "simple things" you say are really not all that simple.
- joeax 8y agoI've been thinking a lot about this (after hearing about the Airbnb guy [1] the other day) as it pertains to the cloud i.e. Azure, GCP. I'd hate to be a company that spends hundreds of thousands moving its infrastructure to the cloud, then suddenly without warning it's all terminated without cause or explanation. On a side note, as a published author on Amazon, I've heard horror stories in the usual author forums of Amazon doing the same to authors, pulling all their novels off their site without warning and terminating their account. Amazon does have some remediation pathways (unlike the AirBnB guy), and many authors had their accounts restored after weeks or months of perstering support (although the damage is done). [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17523056 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17523056
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- ThoAppelsin 8y agoI've got another thing to become suspicious about, which again involves VPN. I live in Turkey, I use VPN (on AWS at Ohio) not to circumvent anything else than the imposed restrictions of my own country, and not some other countries' or companies'. Along with countless others, Wikipedia and Imgur are some well-known websites that are made unaccessible from Turkey. With Windows 10's VPN client, you don't even recognize that you are on VPN. The overhead is so low (relative to the basic internet speeds), that I don't even notice that VPN is on most of the time. I usually open it when I want to visit some Wikipedia page, and turn it back off after recognizing delay/lag on the games I'm playing online. Not even videos load recognizably slower, not on my VPN on AWS at least. Within last 10 days, I had encountered the news about Dragon Ball Z - Season 1 being free on Microsoft Store, one like this I just found searching: https://www.neowin.net/news/first-season-of-dragon-ball-z-now-free-to-download-on-windows-10-and-xbox-one https://www.neowin.net/news/first-season-of-dragon-ball-z-no... I wanted to give both the anime and the Microsoft Store's video section a try, and did nothing more than just opening the Microsoft Store, finding the content, getting it for free and watching the first episode. My guess is that this might have been the problem. If this really is the case, then I could not possibly know I was fooling Microsoft Store: - I did not and still do not know if the content was not available, free or paid, from Turkey. There were no indications of the content being unavailable to Turkey on the Store page. - Microsoft Store did not ask me if I am from Ohio, I never said I was from Ohio. I regularly use VPN for personal reasons, unrelated to this matter. I did not use VPN to make Microsoft Store think that I am from Ohio. Microsoft Store itself may have falsely assumed that I am from Ohio, and granted me the right to watch a content for free. It is Microsoft Store's fault for immediately assuming my location from the way I connect to the Internet. If my guesses are true, then Microsoft's Microsoft Store is the culprit for being overly presumptuous about my location, not asking me for approval, hence not putting me responsible, and giving me free access to some content as a result. I may not be put responsible for Microsoft's presumptions that I haven't approved.
- mirimir 8y ago> I wanted to give both the anime and the Microsoft Store's video section a try, and did nothing more than just opening the Microsoft Store, finding the content, getting it for free and watching the first episode. My guess is that this might have been the problem. I agree. It's very likely that, by using a US VPN, you circumvented geo-restriction in the Microsoft Store. You could test that by creating another Microsoft account, under a fake name, using a commercial VPN service with a non-US exit. Then try to get the Dragon Ball Z episode from Microsoft Store. If you need help, feel free to email me.
- hyperman1 8y agoA few years ago, google tried introducing a real name policy on google plus. Accounts were being banned left and right. Google removed everything including gmail when they decided your name was wrong on plus. That was when I realized I could not participate in plus: I realized how important my gmail account had become. I am diversifying and backing up today, but gmail stays a single point of failure. The result: Even if google drive and a lot of their services sound really nice, I simply do not dare using them. I can't even take the risk of paying them: Anything non-gmail is a chance for them to obliterate my digital life. Opening a second account is probably a bad idea: One day some algorithm will find out and either merge them or simply nuke both. Not shooting at google specifically, this AskHN proves microsoft is just as bad. But it sounds to me these companies will have to do something or lose user trust.
- ddebernardy 8y ago> Opening a second account is probably a bad idea: One day some algorithm will find out and either merge them or simply nuke both. Nuking both would be nuts except in extreme edge cases. It could potentially nuke the accounts of all spouses and parents and kids who share a laptop at home. Granted, everyone has their own writing style and computers seem good at identifying text written by people based on the latter, but that's still a big risk for the tech company.
- hyperman1 8y agoThe point is: They are, for all relevant criteria, nuts. It is cheaper and less risky for them to be completely insane pants-on-head bonkers once in a while than to find out what has happened and tell you. They don't care as they are big, you are small, and unless you annoy them enough to actually notice you, nothing is going to happen.
- captainmuon 8y agoI find these stories really disturbing. Are there any services (I'm thinking mostly of email, cloud storage) that explicitly say they will - provide a reason if they ban you - always let you take out your data (unless not legally possible) - have decent customer service ?
- oval-atom 8y agodid you originally open the account using an "alternate email"?......and now they have Temporarily Suspended the account...? But they give you the option to provide a text able phone number and give you 10 minutes to use the texted Access Code? I have had that happen 3 times......... they after your cell phone number and holding your account hostage to get it. They will not respond to any other option nor give evidence of what they claim violated any Terms of Use. They just say "Suspected".
- mehblahwhatevs 8y ago> Microsoft's own way of justice is against the legal systems in all the modern countries, which always makes sure that the accused knows their faults, as one of their rights, and for the benefit of the accused not getting involved in such acts for a second time, for that they this time will know. Welcome to the modern world. I read frequently on the /r/androiddev subreddit about Android devs who have had apps suspended or accounts closed for reasons beyond their comprehension. I frequently read about people wanting tech platforms to start censoring more actively (Twitter, FB, Youtube?) and for them to boot controversial people for using their free speech (even if offensive). Unfortunately giving "the accused" any sort of recourse doesn't seem to be a priority when the PR machine is going against a tech company - it's easier for them to use the banhammer.
- ams6110 8y agoMicrosoft isn't a government. They can't arrest you, and they can't seize your property (that you haven't already given them). As a private entity, they can define the terms by which they provide or revoke services, within some broad boundaries such as Civil Rights law. So that can suck, if you don't know why you've been banned or possibly when you are banned by mistake, but that is the risk of using these kinds of services.
- roryisok 8y agoContrary to most of the posters on here, I have had nothing but positive experiences with Windows 10. I don't get served ads in the OS (or don't notice them). I don't see any upsell. I don't get blue screens. Edge is a competent and effective browser, and I often use it over Firefox or chrome, though I still use those for development. I am a happy customer. I have a paid OneDrive account that stores all my family photos. Reading this has made me realise it could so easily happen to me. I'm going to make double sure I back up everything locally too, from now on. MS only has my photos though. Google really has me by the balls. Ten years of emails with friends and customers, and pretty much every login I have is tied to my gmail. If that was taken I away I would be truly boned
- mrfredward 8y agoWindows 10 has been bombarding me with "start your Office free trial" ads for years. I keep disabling the notification, and it keeps coming back when I get updates. That's my only complaint, but it isn't a small one. Having advertisements so deeply baked in to an operating system is disgusting.
- roryisok 8y agoWhere do these appear? I've honestly never seen them
- kungtotte 8y agoFastmail has a really smooth import function that lets you migrate your gmail mail easily. They also make it easy to regularly backup your mail offline and if you ever want to quit their service they have a "Download everything" button that gets you a copy of every piece of data in an accessible format. One of their principles is "Your data is your own". I migrated from Gmail at the beginning of the year and I haven't looked back once. My Gmail is still active and is forwarding to my fastmail account, but at this point it wouldn't really affect me if they shut it down.
- roryisok 8y agoI might do that. I backed up all my gmail using a third party tool last year so it is possible, but my issue is more that I have so many profiles tied to that gmail address that losing it would be a nightmare. If they started charging for gmail tomorrow I would just have to pay whatever it was because it would take weeks to change the address across all my accounts
- DoofusOfDeath 8y ago> "Pursuant to our terms, we cannot reactivate your account, nor provide details as to why it was closed." Am I correctly interpreting their statement as saying that they're constrained by their own self-imposed policies?
- ryandrake 8y agoEveryone should take some time to go through their online accounts and ask: “if I were to wake up tomorrow banned from this account, would it be a disaster?” If the answer is “yes” you should take corrective action right away and make that answer “no.” Or at least minimize the number of accounts for which the answer is “yes”. The reality is that this could happen to anyone, for any or no reason. Don’t pin your life to an online account you have no real right to.
- ryanmarsh 8y agoBy your logic Apple completely owns me. I have no idea what to do about that. To start with I could run my own email server on my own domain (something I did years ago and have no appetite for in the modern mail deliverability cesspool). That’s just email. If they wanted to disable my phone or apps I rely on I’d be equally screwed. Is there a way to live digitially today that isn’t at the pleasure of some large tech company?
- AH4oFVbPT4f8 8y agoWhen was the last time you backed up your email? I recently moved off of Gmail to Fastmail just to make it easier to have a backup copy outside of Google's control. I keep most of my photography (500GB) in OneDrive spread across three machines and yet I still have multiple external hard drive copies just incase OneDrive does a complete wipe across all my systems. For the apps, couldn't you create a new account (sure you'd have to buy the apps again) and be back up and running?
- stevehawk 8y agoIt's funny. I go through great lengths to encrypt and back up most things of mine but the one thing I just realized I was overlooking? Fastmail. It exists on their server and on my phone in their mobile app but I never thought to just setup Thunderbird/IMAP and keep a local copy updated every so often. It's easy to overlook something.
- 8y ago
- frugalmail 8y agoThis is a bummer, and not customer friendly. This is one* of the reasons why I never use single sign on for other services. * other reasons include: not wanting SSO to know where I'm going, when I'm going to it. It's none of their business! Not wanting a cascading breach
- kup0 8y agoAlmost makes me wonder if legislation requiring companies to "provide details as to the reason for account closure" is a necessity. If a company can take everything away from you at the turn of a dime, you should at least be entitled to know why it was done.
- tootahe45 8y agoMy account got suspended and kicked me off a month ago by simply accessing the forwarding section of my Microsoft account. Tried it on another account and same thing. To this day i am confused about that, and how some of these big companies with the toughest entry requirements make the dumbest crap.
- nasredin 8y agoYep. Same thing happened here. New account banned after changing Hotmail settings.
- beavis2 8y agoYes. Been there, done that. I was wondering what it was I could have done. I was thinking of all the "grey area" things I may have been up to - then I paused and thought: "why am I concerned they could know so much?" because it's possible. That was the final week I used Windows. It will get worse before it gets better, and I'm actually thankful.
- CommanderData 8y agoImagine your Github repos gone because Microsoft thought you violated TOS. Well now that's just an eventually.
- ap46 8y agoFolks, it is high time & rather long enough time that we actually bought domains & setup our own email addresses since now everything is linked with one & random termination of a free-email account & linked data loss is simply unacceptable. But that's what you get when you go with a free service provider.
- ToFab123 8y agoThis is not first time someone has been kicked out of their MS/Google/Apple/Cloud provider with any explanation. Has anyone tried to sue them in order to get the answer to the question "why"?
- JVIDEL 8y agoThat's the problem we been talking about for years with regards to dependency on the cloud. Take digital games: you don't own then, when you pay roughly the same amount you did for a boxed game a decade ago now you barely get a license, not a right, to play said game on platforms such as valve for as long as they allow you to. And it's the same problem with software in general these days, no matter if you pay you don't own it so you don't have a right to use it.
- lurker_primo 8y agoI have nothing useful that I can say here except that this has happened to me. A few months back, I created a new account on Outlook with a username that I wanted to adopt for my communication. When I tried to login the next day, the account had been suspended by Microsoft with a similar reason given. I didn't do anything further because I had just created the account and had nothing associated with it.