5 ms·

Is such paranoia warranted? Millions of corporate laptops run Windows 11 just fine. I know M$ is evil and spying on you, but not to such degree.

miahi 1y ago
Having a Windows 11 corporate laptop with a domain/Entra login, I actually trust it more than a home Windows 11 with a Microsoft account. Because if I lock myself out, I have a contact (corporate support) that is actually interested in helping me recover everything. With a Microsoft account it's a mess. I had so many problems with Microsoft accounts that I lost count of how many I have, and most are broken in some way, because of different issues and different service integrations over time. The Skype account is now useless. I never recovered my paid Minecraft account after one event. With a machine with a local account, now I have to be very careful on what I click related to MS accounts, because trying to solve various issues with Teams, I managed to get the local account linked with that MS account. I spent hours trying to recover a different account after I randomly filled one nagging question about birth date - who wants to give the real birth date to Microsoft - and then I got locked out because I said was underage :). So yes, one of the big issues is the push to have a linked OS account where you have to rely on MS support to solve your issues, otherwise you basically get locked out of your machine and other things you paid for. Also, domain policies offer more control over the corporate PCs (this is how some of the MS spying is shut off on corporate PCs; it's debatable if the corporate spying added by other domain policies is an improvement).
- RyanHamilton 1y ago
  I have to agree, I've also suffered account problems. I was locked out from an email address I used for 20 years. It refuses to take my password which is still valid. I've changed phone number since 20 years ago so can't use that and the security questions were nonsense as I was a teenager. Originally my account never had phone number, they insisted I add it when they integrated my Skype account perhaps. So I didn't expect access to that phone number to be a strong ongoing requirement.
chneu 1y ago
I don't trust microsoft to not push an update that exposes all my stuff. Their updates the last few years have been an absolutely shitshow in so many regards.
sshine 1y ago
> Is such paranoia warranted? Millions of corporate laptops run Windows 11 just fine. Yes. With Windows Recall data mining surveillance screenshots taken every 5-7 seconds, completely disregarding if this may compromise your security, safety or privacy, we move from "you're the product" to "you're a pet in a zoo, and we want to learn from your behavior." > I know M$ is evil and spying on you, but not to such degree.* I mean, they could be recording every second. I'm pretty sure that's a bandwidth issue. Not because they really feel like giving you 3-4 second pockets of security, safety and privacy.
- TiredOfLife 1y ago
  I can't wait for the AI overlords to take ower. Maybe then we can finally be free from people spreading misinformation and fud.
- delfinom 1y ago
  >Windows Recall data mining surveillance screenshots Some of you people are just too far gone to turn off a setting.
  - chainingsolid 1y ago
    We don't trust them to not turn it back on later...
  - TiredOfLife 1y ago
    Turn on. It's off by default. But people on HN, reddit and twitter are too stupid.
    - xigoi 1y ago
      > It's off by default. For now. This is Microsoft we’re talking about. Needing a Microsoft account to log in to Windows used to be optional.
  - sshine 1y ago
    I’m reminded of a checkbox titled “Don’t ask me next time” when logging into Microsoft Online that I am given the option to check every single time I log in. My lack of trust in Microsoft (or Google) to keep my interest in mind is rooted in experience. The problem is: once your organisation is so corrupt that they think of this shit, turning off bad ideas becomes a game of whack-a-mole. Just say no to this kind of behaviour.
JdeBP 1y ago
I recently, by playing around with the LAN's default PAC file and a dummy HTTP server, discovered that on a machine that says in System Settings that Proxy Auto-Discovery is turned off, the PAC file is still fetched and used by a too-large number of Microsoft/Google background auto-update services, from Windows Update to Office. * https://mastodonapp.uk/@JdeBP/114693762493884550 https://mastodonapp.uk/@JdeBP/114693762493884550 I had been lucky through having done my own experimentation, decades ago, with setting up a default PAC file on the LAN and having left it in just-send-everything-directly mode, keeping it as I upgraded things on the LAN, all of these years. Because otherwise I would have been vulnerable to a third-party in the search path for years, on a machine that clearly and unequivocally, including per direct inspection of the setting in the registry, has this switched off. * https://jdebp.uk/FGA/web-browser-auto-proxy-configuration.html https://jdebp.uk/FGA/web-browser-auto-proxy-configuration.ht...

miahi 1y ago

Having a Windows 11 corporate laptop with a domain/Entra login, I actually trust it more than a home Windows 11 with a Microsoft account. Because if I lock myself out, I have a contact (corporate support) that is actually interested in helping me recover everything. With a Microsoft account it's a mess. I had so many problems with Microsoft accounts that I lost count of how many I have, and most are broken in some way, because of different issues and different service integrations over time. The Skype account is now useless. I never recovered my paid Minecraft account after one event. With a machine with a local account, now I have to be very careful on what I click related to MS accounts, because trying to solve various issues with Teams, I managed to get the local account linked with that MS account. I spent hours trying to recover a different account after I randomly filled one nagging question about birth date - who wants to give the real birth date to Microsoft - and then I got locked out because I said was underage :). So yes, one of the big issues is the push to have a linked OS account where you have to rely on MS support to solve your issues, otherwise you basically get locked out of your machine and other things you paid for. Also, domain policies offer more control over the corporate PCs (this is how some of the MS spying is shut off on corporate PCs; it's debatable if the corporate spying added by other domain policies is an improvement).

RyanHamilton 1y ago
I have to agree, I've also suffered account problems. I was locked out from an email address I used for 20 years. It refuses to take my password which is still valid. I've changed phone number since 20 years ago so can't use that and the security questions were nonsense as I was a teenager. Originally my account never had phone number, they insisted I add it when they integrated my Skype account perhaps. So I didn't expect access to that phone number to be a strong ongoing requirement.

chneu 1y ago

I don't trust microsoft to not push an update that exposes all my stuff. Their updates the last few years have been an absolutely shitshow in so many regards.

sshine 1y ago

> Is such paranoia warranted? Millions of corporate laptops run Windows 11 just fine. Yes. With Windows Recall data mining surveillance screenshots taken every 5-7 seconds, completely disregarding if this may compromise your security, safety or privacy, we move from "you're the product" to "you're a pet in a zoo, and we want to learn from your behavior." > I know M$ is evil and spying on you, but not to such degree.* I mean, they could be recording every second. I'm pretty sure that's a bandwidth issue. Not because they really feel like giving you 3-4 second pockets of security, safety and privacy.

TiredOfLife 1y ago
I can't wait for the AI overlords to take ower. Maybe then we can finally be free from people spreading misinformation and fud.
delfinom 1y ago
>Windows Recall data mining surveillance screenshots Some of you people are just too far gone to turn off a setting.
- chainingsolid 1y ago
  We don't trust them to not turn it back on later...
- TiredOfLife 1y ago
  Turn on. It's off by default. But people on HN, reddit and twitter are too stupid.
  - xigoi 1y ago
    > It's off by default. For now. This is Microsoft we’re talking about. Needing a Microsoft account to log in to Windows used to be optional.
- sshine 1y ago
  I’m reminded of a checkbox titled “Don’t ask me next time” when logging into Microsoft Online that I am given the option to check every single time I log in. My lack of trust in Microsoft (or Google) to keep my interest in mind is rooted in experience. The problem is: once your organisation is so corrupt that they think of this shit, turning off bad ideas becomes a game of whack-a-mole. Just say no to this kind of behaviour.

JdeBP 1y ago

I recently, by playing around with the LAN's default PAC file and a dummy HTTP server, discovered that on a machine that says in System Settings that Proxy Auto-Discovery is turned off, the PAC file is still fetched and used by a too-large number of Microsoft/Google background auto-update services, from Windows Update to Office. * https://mastodonapp.uk/@JdeBP/114693762493884550 https://mastodonapp.uk/@JdeBP/114693762493884550 I had been lucky through having done my own experimentation, decades ago, with setting up a default PAC file on the LAN and having left it in just-send-everything-directly mode, keeping it as I upgraded things on the LAN, all of these years. Because otherwise I would have been vulnerable to a third-party in the search path for years, on a machine that clearly and unequivocally, including per direct inspection of the setting in the registry, has this switched off. * https://jdebp.uk/FGA/web-browser-auto-proxy-configuration.html https://jdebp.uk/FGA/web-browser-auto-proxy-configuration.ht...