
Windows 10 could start bullying people into using a Microsoft account to install - fraqed
https://www.techradar.com/news/windows-10-could-start-bullying-people-into-using-a-microsoft-account-to-install
======
speeder
I use a mix of Windows 7 and *nix OSes both at home and work.

At work we do have some Win10 machines, and they are ALWAYS doing something
completely off the wall bizarre and unexpected, also doing any sort of
maintenance on them is a pain, the tablet-style interface shoehorned into some
places just doesn't work well.

I know Win7 support is over, but we don't intend to leave it for Win10, we
might leave it for Reactos or something else, but not Win10.

Some examples of Win10 issues:

sending tons of data to MS without permission.

Not allowing us to install with local account unless we disable network on the
EFI.

Despite we trying everything to disable updates, the thing updates itself,
reset several configurations, and reboot the machine.

One of the times it did that, it broke some ancient but mandatory software on
our business (it was a PDF driver that was mandatory to be used by our bank
that would issue the invoice for our clients, so when this happened we were
forced to install all banking software on a Win7 machien so we could get
paid...).

Showing ads out of the blue on Start menu and on the login screen.

Installed games without permission (not Microsoft ones, I mean stuff that is
popular on mobile, from king.com and whatnot).

The list goes and goes on.

~~~
corey_moncure
>Despite we trying everything to disable updates, the thing updates itself,
reset several configurations, and reboot the machine.

I too had tried all the tricks, including using a remote Powershell into my
own local machine as the System role to change ownership of the Update
"Orchestrator" and disable it, etc., nothing worked and Windows finds a way to
revert all the settings you make.

Then I discovered an open source utility written in C# that works with
Windows' own internal Windows Update API to disable its shenanigans. Search
for "wumgr". You can disable the automatic updates, block access to the WU
servers, and even disable the WU page in the Settings app. You can also use it
to manage the updates manually and selectively if you prefer. So far it has
worked flawlessly on my machines and hopefully it will work for you as well.

There are many many reasons why not being in control of OS updates is a bad
thing, but the absolute red line for me is having my laptop wake itself up
inside of my bag while I'm traveling, potentially creating a fire hazard and
certainly draining the battery life my career may be about to depend on during
an important presentation, or create incompatibility issues.

~~~
datashow
My workplace hosts its own Windows update server, so they have total control
of Windows updates.

------
pkorzeniewski
I feel like the tech in general is getting user-hostile... Everyone (websites,
apps, cars, tvs, etc.) wants to track you and collect as much data as
possible, websites nag you to install app on your phone, dark patterns
everywhere, "smart" devices that won't work without an internet connection or
become bricks after a while, smartphone manufacturers forcing you to buy new
phone by making apps slower on older devices, more closed protocols and walled
gardens - the list goes on and on...

~~~
bregma
It's not the tech that's user-hostile. It's just the usual rent-seekers have
cottoned on to how to leverage it to, well, seek rent.

Unfortunately those people will always be with us because it's not completely
ethical to weed them out at birth.

~~~
magduf
Would it be unethical to genetically engineer embryos to eliminate sociopathy?
Or how about engineering an airborne virus which modifies victims' DNA to
eliminate sociopathy? (Of course, these could have drastic unintended side-
effects, especially the latter.)

~~~
Mountain_Skies
The potential unintended consequences was covered in the movie Serenity.

------
Izkata
They're already there. The ThinkPad I bought in December didn't have the local
account option available.

It's currently in "trick the user" mode: it has you connect to wifi to
download the latest security updates, then remembers the network and
automatically tries to have you create an account a step or two later.

I avoided it by rebooting, going into the bios, disabling wifi, and then
resuming setup - only when it couldn't connect would it allow a local account.
Just rebooting to restart initial setup doesn't work, it remembers the
network.

~~~
scandinavegan
I bought two different laptops in January and installed Windows 10. I managed
to reach the local account option by entering a Gmail address without a
connected Microsoft account when it first asked me to log in during initial
setup. At the failure page they added a local account button that wasn't on
the previous screen so that I could set up a local offline account.

It still keeps nagging with a notification saying that my Windows installation
is not fully secure since I haven't added a Microsoft account. I've disabled
that notification, but it may have disabled all notifications from the
settings part of Windows, I'm not sure.

~~~
zrobotics
This is odd, considering it's a Microsoft device, but the Surface Pro I bought
in January had a local account option available, and I connected to the update
servers before creating my local account. However, around the same time I
accidentally converted the local account on my gaming desktop into a Msft
account when signing into 365 to setup onedrive. I didn't realize I was doing
that until my account photo on the login screen changed. I can still login to
the PC with my old password (Msft account p/w is the typical 20 char random
string from my password manager).

Tip- you can disable the security nag notifications in defender settings
individually. There is a screen with different categories of 'threats', and
you can turn on/off warnings individually. You probably don't want those
notifications entirely disabled, since it is pretty useful as anti-virus, but
the account and backup notifications are obnoxious.

------
jasonjayr
FWIW, I don't see this set of steps in any of the comments here. And as of
late I've been setting up tons of Dell Laptops, so I have this memorized.

Windows 10 Professional, freshly minted from Dell:

* "Set up for organization"

* "Local account or domain join" (it's in small print in the lower left)

* Create a local Admin account

* Do not setup a password at this time (it'll force you to set up recovery questions or some other nonsense.)

* set all the data sharing options to "no"

* skip entering data for the Dell registration

* On first login, hit ctrl-alt-del and set a password there.

Windows Home does not offer the choice to "Setup up for organization", so you
are forced to make a windows account. There's no way easy way out of it.

Microsoft keeps saying "Windows is a service" and has that text somewhere in
the install. I guess if you want an operating system, you have to turn to
Linux.

------
teh_klev
I'm based in the UK. This has been going on for a good while outside the US.
Back in mid November last year I struggled to get past the requirement to
create an online account when rebuilding a friend's laptop after a hard disk
failure.

I scratched my head for a good bit thinking that I'd missed the old pathway
that let you skip the online account step, but it turned out that the
installer's behaviour had actually been altered.

After some more dome scratching I eventually discovering that disabling the
built-in wifi module (no wired LAN connection was made) caused the installer
to let me create a local account instead.

Quite bloody annoying.

Footnote: this was an install from a bootable USB stick where I'd "burned" the
full Windows 10 ISO image.

------
raxxorrax
Windows 10 is a total catastrophe for business and private use.

It established ads and spying as normal for an OS, it removed abilities to
administrate the OS in a meaningful way and mostly ignored users in favor of
nudging people to their products. Products that I would declare to be mostly
in beta phase. The bi-annual untargeted channel version couldn't sort desktop
symbols without bugs if you had multiple monitors attached till a few month
ago.

And before anyone mentions that "normal people" like it and it is just the
icky nerds that have reservations: Not in my experience. They hate MS spying
on them too. It is just that there is often a lack of an alternative if they
are caught up in the ecosystem.

I wonder how people even manage if they don't have some friends and family to
help them get rid of the bad stuff.

There are underlying improvements, but what use is a safer system if the
malware comes preinstalled.

~~~
m_fayer
For anyone looking at my HN history, apologies for being a broken record.

For the elderly variety of normal people this is a disaster: All the behind-
the-scenes UX and setting flipping, the forced installs, and the performance
dips that comes with all this means that low-confidence users feel like
they're working on quicksand. The experience becomes unpredictable and scary
and the iPad gets more and more use and the PC gathers dust.

I don't get why this all is worth the cost of squandering the good will MS has
built up elsewhere.

~~~
bregma
> For the elderly variety of normal people this is a disaster

that's pretty wretchedly ageist. I know people up and down the age spectrum
for whom this is an identical unmitigated disaster with the same effects. I
also know a lot of greybeards who will just go in to some "registry" thing and
rip out the cancer at its source.

~~~
at_a_remove
Eh. It's not inaccurate.

For whatever reason, I've fallen into a kind of side job of helping various
people with their computers (I have trouble saying no) and I have noticed that
as people get older, their desire to deal with UI changes declines rather
rapidly. Many operate purely on muscle memory rather than re-reading and re-
parsing whatever new UI gets rolled out.

New things on the screen (or in menus) can induce a kind of paralytic panic
and now with Windows 10, Microsoft feels rather free to just ... add stuff,
wherever. My first Windows 10 tablet was baffling because stuff kept appearing
when I know I didn't put it there. This prompted me to get ahold of and
install Windows 10 LTSB. I could not be happier with the result. After a bit
of wrestling, I was able to control when updates occurred (if at all) and the
random UI changes vanished.

I, too, am getting older.

How much bunkum fluid versus crystallized intelligence is, I do not know, but
this has seemed to be a trend I have picked up.

------
AsusFan
Start?

You already have to disconnect form the network to be able to use the "offline
account" option in the installer (last I checked, which was like a couple of
months ago).

So this has been going on for a while.

Edit (merge the other comment I deleted):

To clarify, this was a Home Edition. I understand that the Pro edition doesn't
behave this way.

~~~
saagarjha
No, you don’t. Local installs are the smallest option on the screen, but
they’re still an option.

~~~
karatestomp
I last installed Win10 a few months ago and it was not, until I unplugged the
Ethernet cable and went back a couple steps to get it to re-assess things.

------
kop316
What makes it worse is when their account set up is broken. For an interview
yesterday, I attempted to install and get an account for Skype. The back end
broke, and when I tried to do create a general Microsoft account to confirm it
was the back end, I was banned from using my email because of "suspicious
activity".

To make it more fun, their "Technical Support" chat failed as well, so I was
unable to get a human to even talk through this.

That would be even worse if that prevented me from installing or using
Windows.

~~~
raxxorrax
Still have the same problem with my private account. Exactly the same
reasoning. Wanted to just delete the account after that, but I would need to
login and they ask for my telephone number which they certainly will not get.
Well, they already have it on my business account but that is beside the
point. Tried contacting support, but you need an account... even wrote a fan
mail to SNadella@microsoft.com (spoiler: no response).

They would be legally obliged to delete my account, but at some point I had
the revelation that any minute spending thoughts on them is a wasted minute of
life.

------
velox_io
They do still have the option to force local accounts only. Fire up Group
Policy Editor "GPedit" then Computer Config/ admin templates/ system/ user
profiles/ and enable "Only allow local user profiles".

"If you enable this setting, the following occurs on the affected computer: At
first logon, the user receives a new local profile, rather than the roaming
profile. At logoff, changes are saved to the local profile. All subsequent
logons use the local profile. "

This is on Windows 10 Pro. There's a surprising number of settings that can be
configured here. As Microsoft continues to dumb down menus and the control
panel they are normally tucked in here. Or you may rarely have to dig into
Powershell and the registry, very rarely.

------
chrisan
Not going to lie... I setup win10 2 weeks ago and I didn't see (notice!) the
local options.

As I use Outlook.com/Onedrive I didn't care until I opened up my terminal and
noticed my username was the first 5 letters of my email. What the hell. I
don't get why they would do that instead of just using your firstname or
asking you at least. or at the very least use _everything_ up till @ instead
of the first 5...

This irked me beyond belief and after googling a bunch of crazy ways to 'fix'
this, the easiest turned out to be creating a local account 'chris', deleted
my MS account, then attached the MS account to 'chris'

~~~
PaulKeeble
To get it now you often have to disable all networking, if you don't do that
it doesn't show up. It is that hidden now.

------
giancarlostoro
I mean people are bullied into hooking up Google Chrome with their gmail, and
then their entire web history is "backed up" on Google's servers. At least
Firefox's Sync features have been end to end encrypted, you lose your
password, you lose your files / history. If you log into a gmail account it
would force it on Chrome in the past, so I stopped using gmail on Chrome
altogether.

------
KwanEsq
"Start"? It's been making it a struggle to do so for a while.

------
mdszy
Every day it seems more realistic to just install Windows 10 LTSC [0] instead
of dealing with this crap.

0: [https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/whats-
new/ltsc/](https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/whats-new/ltsc/)

~~~
Silhouette
AFAIK that's still not an option available to for home users or small
businesses, though (unless you're willing to do illegal things to get it, I
assume, but that's not a good solution to the underlying problem here).

~~~
mdszy
I haven't paid for a windows license a single time in my life and kinda forgot
that people (home users, anyway) actually did.

~~~
Tijdreiziger
You indirectly pay for a Windows license every time you buy a laptop.

~~~
lonelappde
Unless you get a Clevo based laptop, right?

------
jellicle
That headline seems really bad. Windows has been in "bullying" mode for years
now. Installing without a Microsoft account has been very difficult for a long
time. The change now is to refuse to install at all without a Microsoft
account, which is not "bullying" any more, it's something else.

------
awicz
They've already started. We've been replacing Dell laptops at work these past
couple months and it was nearly impossible to fully boot Windows without
signing in via a Microsoft account. The whole process just felt ridiculous,
especially on a computer clearly intended for a business.

~~~
philliphaydon
When my work computer just used a MS account I had 0 issues, when i was forced
to put it on the domain and have an AD account etc I have had nothing but
issues. Intrusive sys-admins are more annoying these days trying to control
and lock things down in a more connected world.

~~~
UI_at_80x24
>Intrusive sys-admins are more annoying these days trying to control and lock
things down in a more connected world.

How about trying to stop a raging forest-fire and the primary tool you are
supposed to use is a squirt gun? The backend that we have to work with was
designed around the concept of "1 network, X users" and the biggest threat was
a boot-sector virus that formatted your hard-drive after silently replicating
itself to every machine.

Now you need security in layers, because even if every god-damned employee was
as smart as Tim Berners-Lee and didn't open every email attachment, drive-by
downloads; 0-day browser exploits that give access to ring0 coupled with an OS
that releases updates that are more likely to bjork your computer then
actually solve the fucking problem these computers are sitting fucking ducks.

And because we are seen as "Intrusive" we can't even get the C-level assholes
to listen to us, or to follow the rules that they see are necessary for
everybody else.

The environment has grown so hostile that Becky in accounting doesn't need
internet access, and you are lucky we don't limit the internet to 1 terminal
in the lunch room with every port disabled and filled with a hot-glue gun.

Just because YOU are "smart with computers" doesn't mean your damn computer is
safe.

We (SysAdmins) are fighting a desperately hard battle. We get shit on by the
end-users, and Upper Management. If you have 1 frustration with your PC
multiply it by thousand, and try to put yourself in our shoes.

------
ProtoAES256
It gets even more notorious with time. I bought a new laptop recently and with
Windows 10 Home instead of my Pro norm with it, and was very shocked to see
how much control did I lose if were I a normal user. The mandatory and force
restarting updates, web results in searches, king games, nag-ful
notifications, edge self promotion, telemetry etc. I can't imagine what
[profanity] that normal users had to live on with in most recent Windows. I'm
waiting for the last straw that is gaming and am ready to ditch Windows
completely.

------
jedieaston
For machines on Windows 10 Pro, click on the “Domain join instead” button
during OOBE. AD joins cannot be completed during OOBE, so it falls back to
asking you to create a local account.

------
jokes9000
debian linux. feels twice as fast as windows and there is zero concern its
going to do something insidious.

------
have_faith
Just as bad is forcing you to set up a pin number on top of your password in
order to log in. It wouldn't let me not pick a pin during a recent
installation so I had to set one up, finish installing and then remove it in
the settings somewhere. Very odd. I don't even mind it being offered as an
option, maybe some people prefer an alphanumeric pin...

------
userbinator
It's not explicitly mentioned in the article, but the fact that presumably
installing from the _same_ disc will somehow produce different behaviour at
different times (is it phoning home during the install, to decide what to do?)
is rather disturbing.

------
dessant
NVIDIA has also removed the possibility to set up an NVIDIA SHIELD TV without
a Google account, there is no option to skip logging in during setup. The
requirement for a Google account is not advertised on their site [1]. Other
devices with the same Android TV version have a skip button on the Google
account screen.

[1] [https://www.nvidia.com/en-us/shield/shield-
tv/](https://www.nvidia.com/en-us/shield/shield-tv/)

------
rezeroed
Bought a surface a few months ago, nice hardware, but windows 10 is
horrifically spammy/scammy. Immediately replaced it with arch.

~~~
tunap
Can that be done safely? As I understood it, albeit years ago, you needed
certain MS services/drivers for thermal & battery management unavailable in
Win 7 or Linux. The hardware & build of the early Surface Tablets was
solid(still?), but I would never considered using Win 8 or 10.

~~~
rezeroed
I have a Laptop 3, not tablet, seems fine.

------
cr3ative
The install experience is so much cleaner if you don't let it near a network.

------
Priem19
[https://xubuntu.org](https://xubuntu.org), you're welcome.

Or use Windows 7 if you have to. Windows 10 is just malware and bloatware
built around Windows 7.

~~~
dontdoitpls
I've tried for the nth time 3 years ago to use Linux desktop (Ubuntu).

It just takes Soo much effort to get things to work. Netflix and deactivate
mouse acceleration(which isn't perfect) to name a few.

I love ubuntu server, favorite os of all time. But Linux desktop just isn't
anywhere near Windows quality.

~~~
wayneftw
Manjaro is better than Ubuntu as a workstation and for developers it's better
than Windows in my opinion. I've been trying out Linux desktops for 20 years
and it's the only one that got me to switch.

I've been on Manjaro now for almost 2 years, doing
JavaScript/React/PHP/Ruby/Python work (and some .NET Core with SQL Server!). I
use VS Code and Chrome. I listen to music with Spotify. We have Slack. I can
remote desktop into Windows machines with FreeRDP.

Recently someone said that they thought they would prefer to try Xubuntu
because it had more official support so I decided to compare it to Manjaro and
try it out on a spare machine. There's really no comparison. Setting up
software on Ubuntu is painful, having to find and add keys to various
disconnected software repos for every package. After a week, the Ubuntu
installation ate itself after an update and wouldn't boot.

Meanwhile I have 3 workstations running Manjaro (work desktop, home desktop
and personal laptop) and they all run perfectly and installing software is as
easy as opening Add/Remove Software utility and finding what I want.
Everything is there, even my favorite diff util from Scooter Software - Beyond
Compare.

------
wayneftw
Which distribution of Windows 10? I'm thinking it's only the Home version.

I just setup Windows 10 Pro for my brother in-law yesterday and had no problem
choosing a local account.

------
tasogare
Again? Some enterprises never learn.

Also, on one side they get points on the developers side, but they lose more
on the consumer side with those practices.

~~~
saiya-jin
I simply don't care what products they do, M$ is consistently a piece-of-shit
amoral company, period.

An asshole kid who is kindly opening the doors to teachers and kicks smaller
kids in the head just around the corner and tortures little animals after
school is still a proper asshole.

------
jqpabc123
Stupid requirement that does nothing but discourage the use of other related
MS services --- the ones MS actually earns money from.

------
cm2187
Surely not the enterprise and server version?

------
rb808
Most people here don't like having a MS account, but is it really so terrible?
When I log in each day I'll use my AWS account, 2 or 3 google accounts,
Amazon, Facebook, Twitter, Slack. You can't use a phone or a tablet without a
Apple/Google account, surely having a MS account to use Windows isn't such a
big deal.

~~~
mlrtime
All those things are required because they're online services. You can have a
phone or computer always offline, why do you need a online account?

~~~
tatersolid
How useful is a _phone_ that is _offline_? What exactly do you do with it?
Making phone calls is inherently an online activity.

------
TwoNineFive
Windows 10: It's not your computer.

------
jtdev
Stop using Windows.

~~~
dontdoitpls
What's your desktop alternative?

~~~
zeveb
I have been happily using Linux on my desktop for over twenty years. It hasn't
always been easy, but it has worked quite well for me and it could for others
too.

~~~
mirages
Not for everybody unfortunately. If you want a gaming PC playing most recent
games you have no choices but to remain on Windows.

------
dgellow
What a clickbait title. That's not what the word "bullying" means. Microsoft
is nudging people, maybe forcing them. But definitely not bullying...

~~~
saagarjha
> Microsoft is nudging people, maybe forcing them.

Right, and the bigger student in the cafeteria was just nudging people,
sometimes forcing them, to give up their lunch money.

~~~
dgellow
Why do see a need to conflate both things? Microsoft forcing users to use an
online account is already quite bad. No need to change the definition of what
bullying is to communicate that message.

~~~
thaumasiotes
It's not a change. That's what bullying already meant.

What does "bullying" mean to you?

~~~
dgellow
Some excerpts from Wikipedia definition, that I find accurate:

> Bullying is the use of force, coercion, or threat, to abuse, aggressively
> dominate or intimidate. The behavior is often repeated and habitual.

> Bullying is the activity of repeated, aggressive behavior intended to hurt
> another individual, physically, mentally, or emotionally.

Don’t you see a difference between an actual abuse, and the use of a UX dark
pattern to get users to create/use online accounts?

~~~
thaumasiotes
In the first place, I consider removing local accounts to be an actual abuse.

But in the second place, "bullying" is not restricted to "actual abuses",
however defined. Bullying refers to an attitude, the attitude of shoving
someone around because you can. The reverse of "bullying" is "caving in", not
"being victimized". Here are some cites I pulled from COCA:

> _What are the keys to the match for Halep? It sounds trite, but Halep needs
> to stay aggressive -- as she was in the semis -- and not let Serena bully
> her around the court._

> _Can someone please explain to me why Magic Johnson and other executives
> have been fined by the NBA for just a simple comment on another player, but
> yet, Kawhi Leonard can actively and outwardly recruit an under-contract
> player and persuade him to bully his way out of that contract?_

> _Just look at what China 's trying to do. They're trying to bully us, hold
> our farmers hostage._

> _the Trump administration has proposed eliminating a lot of the legal
> enforcement protections that are in the agreement that are particularly
> important for Canada and Mexico especially because they 're smaller
> economies, smaller countries, much more reliant on the U.S. market. They
> can't really bully their way around to getting things that they want when
> things don't go their way_

These four cites describe three different scenarios, but not one of them could
be considered to match what you claim is the definition of bullying.

~~~
dgellow
Thanks for the informative answer, I learned something today.

------
eatonphil
tldr; Among mainstream OSs I'm most happy with Windows today

For the last few years I've been using Windows 10 rather than macOS. In
general Windows seems mid-to-long-term more stable than macOS. But maybe
that's because I'm used to treating macOS like a nicer Linux while they've
been locking down many Linux-like abilities (kernel modules,
tracing/debugging, etc). But there's also been the macOS filesystem and
permissions model changes that have made upgrading a pain.

I do have a Microsoft account but I don't do anything with it. I don't use any
Microsoft products that are not included in the base install. I tried Hyper-V
for a while but it was painful to configure so I've been using VMWare with
more success.

Generally speaking, it seems like Microsoft is looking further than a year
from now -- getting design and quality right compared to macOS which no longer
seems to have any particular direction. It's not just in their software; I've
been seriously impressed by build quality and pricing on the Surface line of
tablets and laptops. I actually mistook a Surface book for a 2015 macbook pro.
In contrast, I really don't want to gamble with post-2015 Apple hardware.

And although I do a lot of development on my laptop, I'm trying to move to
developing in the cloud or a home-server because compiling kills my battery.
Windows enables this use-case fine. To be fair, macOS would too.

I haven't had any issues with unwanted ads. The only ads I'm aware of are the
lock-screen backgrounds that show different places around the world... I don't
really consider them an ad though.

~~~
geohuz
"In general Windows seems mid-to-long-term more stable than macOS" It really
seems like you are talking a joke?

------
agumonkey
Good luck to their marketing and sales team. It's gonna be a fun game to
convince people to do so when you have perfectly equivalent and usable,
totally free, and now cute open source OS/distros.

People started to sell TAILS on usb keys for $10, if someone packs Linux Mint,
eOS or similar for $5 .. in a web app world, linux + firefox is probably
invisible to the average user.

