3 ms·

Wait, your local login credentials (password presumably hashed) are passed to an external server for storage? Why in the world would that improve the user's exp

• antninja 13y ago
  It doesn't happen if you use a local account but you can login to Windows 8 using your Microsoft account (from Hotmail or whatever). Of course they store those credentials on their servers.
  • kintamanimatt 13y ago
    That seems like a very odd system but a good way to snoop and see who is logging on to a particular computer at a particular location. I can't imagine how this would benefit the user experience one little bit though. What happens if you've lost internet access? (Internet outages happen!) Can you no longer log in to Windows?
    • kryten 13y ago
      It's unified authentication and automatic synchronization between all devices. If you have no Internet access (as per no domain access on Windows), it uses cached credentials.
      • kintamanimatt 13y ago
        That's a bit more of a reasonable explanation. It seems convenient on the surface but I can think of many ways it's a really, really bad idea: third party snooping, the possibility of being locked out of your own computer if your Microsoft account is deleted/deactivated/password changed, possible expiration of cached credentials (and therefore inability to log in) during a protracted period of internet unavailability, etc
        • kryten 13y ago
          ALL of those are possible and have occurred to that class of account so you've hit the nail on the head there.