Hacker News

points by OuterVale 4 days ago | 0 comments

I know that a lot of tech folks consider it a non issue because it is 'easy' to fix if you know the bypass and your way around the more inner workings, but broadly this isn't really an answer to the problem.

If we always just say 'Oh, well, if you do XYZ then you can manage to do A despite B' then we're eroding our control and agency. Slowly the bypasses will phase out, as they have slowly been in this case, and then we're really in a poor state.

I had a tech support client who came to be because they valued their privacy and didn't want an account but who had no idea how to make that happen. They didn't even really know what to be looking for.

[–] superkuh 4 days ago

Not only that, if someone has a tech knowledgable person set up their Windows 11 computer without online accounts MS updates will cause it to spam the tech-ignorant person owning that computer with misleading pop-ups saying they need to press this button to do $x thing. Which then secretly sets up online accounts which automatically and silently enables drive encryption. Which causes it to go to a bluescreen saying to go to some shady looking URL at aka.ms and type in a long code that appears on your blue screen only broken computer. It's basically ransomware. This is not some theory, I had this happen to a sewing machine laptop I set up for my mother.

And yes, I later learned that aka.ms is a real Microsoft URL. But when it was first described to me it sounded exactly like ransomware and had exactly that effect.

[–] frankacter 4 days ago

I'm by no means suggesting it's normal or that I think it's okay Microsoft removed the native ability.

You're right that I probably made an assumption that someone posting on hacker News would have the technical ability to hit a keyboard combination and type a command on a command line and hit enter, which is essentially what's required currently to utilize the local account ( https://rtech.support/guides/bypass-11/ )

My reply was intended as more of a direct message to OP, as opposed to general advice I think every end user should know and follow. I should have been more clear.