OneDrive automatically backups folders in Windows 11 without users' permissions ( windowsreport.com )

According to the latest reports, Windows 11 has made an independent choice by automatically turning on OneDrive folder backup for Desktop, Pictures, Documents, Music, and Video folders without your permission. This signifies that, whether you approve or not, everything is becoming coordinated with the cloud.

This action from Microsoft fits into a larger pattern where big tech companies cleverly (or not so cleverly) promote their services and subscriptions to users. It isn’t only about Microsoft; there have been instances of Google doing something similar with Google Photos and its storage plans.

Keep an eye on your settings, particularly when you have just finished setting up a new device or updating your operating system. Companies such as Microsoft constantly seek methods to link users with their environments—sometimes without permission.

Audacious ,

Even on windows 10, Onedrive uploaded random crap you don't want and then yells at you that the space is full and buy a subscription. It has to be the worst cloud service of them all because of the bullshit integration. It was easier to disable and remove it than to work with it.

viking ,
@viking@infosec.pub avatar

I have disabled and uninstalled it, but office 365 still enforces it as the default save as location, so now when I use the dialogue, the system hangs for 30 seconds. Even disabled it in the policy management, but no dice.

c0mad0r ,
@c0mad0r@mastodon.world avatar

@viking @Audacious Wise Registry Cleaner may help here. It's like the old ccleaner but without the spying and complaints to buy. The issue is most likely registry related.

viking ,
@viking@infosec.pub avatar

Oh nice, thanks! Will give it a shot.

BigTrout75 ,

"All your base are belong to us"

lauha ,

You have no chance to survive make your time

Duke_Nukem_1990 ,

Last night I updated my BIOS and afterwards my Linux Boot Manager entry was gone. Almost expected but still didn't prepare a LiveUSB, stupid. Had to boot into Windows for the first time in a year and was greeted with the message "Hey some security thing changed, your pin is no longer working. Wanna create a new one?" Of course you need to log in to your Microsoft account for that, otherwise you straight up can't use your install anymore.

Holzkohlen ,

Your mistake was using a MS account for your windows install

Duke_Nukem_1990 ,

Believe me, I know :D

I have half a mind to just nuke both partitions and just reinstall Arch on the entire drive.

Although I am wondering what would have happened, if I didn't have Windows installed after the BIOS update. No boot entries at all? 🤔

phoenixz ,

Install Linux already, just get it over with.

teamevil ,

I'm still learning but it's so much less aggressive in Linux land.

vinyl ,

Make VR work on Linux

phx ,

Literally one of the very few things keeping me with a Windows partition, though it doesn't get used very often

Alatain ,
@Alatain@lemmy.world avatar

My understanding is that it is working much better now than a few months ago. I haven't actually put it to the test yet, but it is on my list of things to try once I have time to set up my index again.

Sabata11792 ,
@Sabata11792@ani.social avatar

I have it somewhat working on Nobara after SteamVR updated a few weeks back. It works, but is rather unstable and you got to reboot any time it craps out. 6/10 technically functional, but needs work.

It doesn't help that my headset has had odd issues even on Windows since it's refurbished.

vinyl ,

Yea I fucked around a lot to make it work, Nobara is usually the most stable one to get vr working but valve keeps pushing out updates that completely fucks up the vr launch process. The other big issue is asynchronous reprojection missing.

Mwa ,
@Mwa@thelemmy.club avatar

People usually don't use linux because or app compatibility ik wine exists but it just doesn't not work with all apps

Zetta ,

To really switch to Linux people need to accept that for a good experience you may need to switch off some software to alternative software.

This wasn't a big deal for me personally and I'm happy I use more open source software now, it can be a bigger issue especially if you need specific tools for work.

Mwa ,
@Mwa@thelemmy.club avatar

I agree, Dont forget game anti-cheat to

phoenixz ,

Most apps have open source versions which work better anyway. I've been on a Linux desktop literally for the past 20+ years now, never looked back

Mwa ,
@Mwa@thelemmy.club avatar

Ngl I have been using some of the open source alternatives on linux now

maxinstuff ,
@maxinstuff@lemmy.world avatar

Yes, install Linux and the end up using O365 in the cloud anyways 🤡

digdilem ,

Remember when Word and Excel Autosave did what you expected it to?

tigeruppercut ,
@tigeruppercut@lemmy.zip avatar

Not sure why these articles are only coming out now. My work bought me a win11 computer a few months ago and I was surprised to learn that the first few things I downloaded to the desktop showed up on my one drive. I don't really use the account I have on it for much, and it was easy enough to turn off in settings but it was still a shock.

Just another invasion of privacy by a giant corpo that none of its users asked for

AnyOldName3 ,
@AnyOldName3@lemmy.world avatar

It's been the default since 2015 when Windows 10 launched, although there was an obvious button to opt out during first-time setup back then which was then respected permanently. It's got gradually less prominent over time, and maybe the article's just doing a really bad job of explaining that it's no longer something where your initial preference is permanent and it'll change back to the default every so often.

archomrade ,

It cannot be that profitable to have just a bunch of random data on their servers. I have so much junk and random bullshit on my drives, it would take a week of labor just to clean my shit well enough to use it for AI training and as soon as I got any notification about cloud space being full i'd turn syncing off - i sure as hell wouldn't fork over any money for a subscription. This is such a big bridge to burn, and the server overhead must be massive.... I just don't understand how they could possibly think this is a good business decision.

Idk, maybe i'm just too deep into privacy/FOSS/selfhosting headspace to see things clearly from the normal-consumer standpoint but I just do not understand this. I really wish someone would leek an internal conversation at one of these companies that explains the big-picture strategy with this move.

dantheclamman ,
@dantheclamman@lemmy.world avatar

They're thinking quarterly. Improves OneDrive usage stats. They can also then coerce customers later by saying they're running out of storage. I'm sure some users will pay, thinking they're about to lose family photos and other important data

archomrade ,

I guess... I am still very skeptical the profit margin even if some people do end up paying for the storage. We're talking about petabytes on petabytes of data.... How many people need to pay a cloud subscription fee to pay for the overhead of the servers?

Idk. This is super suss to me but again, I am clearly not the target market for this service so maybe I don't have a firm grasp of the landscape.

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