
Microsofties out there – stop abusing your customer - hackerfromthefu
I opened a MS account for some email testing, and it somehow auto-linked itself to a Skype account.<p>No permission was asked for, and none would have been granted. What did happen is I opened the email account on a pc running Skype (win32 and web app).<p>I only noticed because Skype since logs me out randomly, even during calls.<p>Searching for a fix indicated to unlink any MS account. I thought I didn&#x27;t have a linked account, but when I checked - there was the Microsoft account that had gatecrashed the private Skype party :(<p>Oh, MS support told me they no longer lets you unlink the accounts.<p>WTF Microsoft, these are Dark Patterns - the same deceptive lying customer unfriendly things done in your name during the Windows 10 upgrade trick dialogues etc.<p>After 30 years as an expert on the MS platform, I want MS to succeed.<p>Can someone at MS fix this, perhaps for me to unlink the accounts (they were unlinked a week ago, they can still be despite the support script saying they can&#x27;t). Then re-enable the working feature you had to unlink the account for anyone - a web search shows it&#x27;s a common issue and customers want to do it. Give customers what they want.<p>Can people in MS who have some common sense and decency push back to stop the abusive nutjobs who have been creating customer unfriendly &#x27;anti-features&#x27; into MS systems.<p>I know other companies treat their customers poorly, but copying abusive behaviour is the wrong lesson and you will eventually get Weinsteined. Instead focus on the big under-served market opportunity to treat customers well, the way you yourself would like to be treated.<p>As people&#x27;s online literacy grows more and more people will realise the deception, bullying, and abuse of the power imbalance that these Dark Patterns are built on, and a history of abusive practices may be the reason today&#x27;s big companies don&#x27;t exist in tomorrow&#x27;s future.
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mindcrash
How did you create this account?

If you do it through the web interface
([https://signup.live.com/](https://signup.live.com/)) you used to get a
vanilla MS account.

However if you create one through Windows 10 I guess you will also
automatically be signed up for all included services, which includes Skype.

Also, one time it was possible to "unlink" Skype from your Microsoft account
(which basically consists out of removing your information from the Skype
Global Address Book) by contacting someone from the Skype support team.
However since a few months they made this removal process a self-service
feature which unfortunately includes closing the entire Microsoft account
linked to Skype.

So your best bet is contacting a support rep from the Skype support team and
ask for your details to be removed from the address book. If they can't do
this anymore you are probably SOL.

Good luck!

~~~
hackerfromthefu
I created the MS account through the web interface, and didn't link it with
the pc. I've just checked and the pc is still using it's local account with no
sign of the MS account from the web (which is as it should be).

Thanks for your suggestion. Based on that I've checked the profile for the
address book on skype and apparently the test account email is not shown.

I did talk with Skype support, and they wouldn't do anything. They've clearly
been trained what to say about this issue, and to not even begin to attempt to
do anything to resolve it.

I'm think I will create my own luck here, and migrate away from Skype fully,
and MS as much as I can, because of these abusive Dark Patterns, the tricking
users into things they don't want while hoovering up personal information are
too prevalent in MS now.

For any readers who aren't familiar with the issues, there are a number of
writeups and arstechnica is a good source - the big and clear events are the
win 10 upgrade dialog, the tricks to make the local PC account harder to use
when installing Windows, and this latest example of linking separate accounts
without asking while breaking the usual boundaries of web pages isolation from
other things on your PC and not allowing unlinking of the accounts forcibly
and unexpectedly linked.

It's part of a pattern of abusive behaviour from Dark Patterns of UX, and I
expect them to continue exploiting their customers in these ways. So I'm going
to create my own luck by removing as much of their influence from my life as
possible. Starting with skype :)

(Edited for a grammar fix.)

