Now with 365, they can ban you from your own computer by simply flipping a variable from 0 to 1.
And it wouldn’t matter if you tried to reinstall the machine, as long as the HW identifiers on the machine are the same the ban will stop the machine from be used after being connected to the internet.
I have no explicit source for this scenario, but I am a 365 admin and extrapolated from my knowledge of Intune.
The way I see it, there is nothing actually preventing Microsoft from blocking computers from using personal 365.
Just look at the autopilot service in intune, you add a machine to it using either a machine ID or a serial number, then it is locked to that tenant and can’t be used outside of that with windows.
There is no checking of actual ownership of the device, and once a device is added to autopilot, it will prompt for a tenant logon even after a complete reinstall.
This means that MS will check any computer that checks in with their servers for their ID and s/n, and against a blocklist.
I would water there are internal controls, but I think your larger points is you could theoretically get around those controls with enough… Skills and/or the right internal people.
I mean there’s no sources cause (as far as I can tell) Microsoft isnt planning on nuking their market share.
But with 365, you get the cloud subscription. So that means OneDrive and Office files/emails being accessible in the cloud. Which, to be fair, is largely a really useful thing and besides OneDrive being a piece of shit program I don’t hear any complaints about that being available.
Then when you install Windows it grabs a bunch of hardware IDs. This is things like what memory, CPU, graphics, drives, etc that you have installed and creates a “hardware key” that allows you to activate windows. When it does this, it sends that information off to Microsoft. According to Microsoft, it’s to stop you from using a license key multiple times. But in my experience it doesn’t really matter anymore.
But theoretically (and I really can’t stress how far fetched this really is) Microsoft could mark your account as inactive which would cause you to lose access to all of your cloud files, and could theoretically (again, i can’t stress how unlikely this is) brick your OS install. Then if you try to reinstall, it would already know your computer and prevent the installer from continuing.
And again, I know I’ve beaten this horse, but the chances of this happening are so close to zero, they may as well be.
Now with 365, they can ban you from your own computer by simply flipping a variable from 0 to 1.
And it wouldn’t matter if you tried to reinstall the machine, as long as the HW identifiers on the machine are the same the ban will stop the machine from be used after being connected to the internet.
Source? That would be useful for helping convince friends/family to switch to Linux and LibreOffice.
I have no explicit source for this scenario, but I am a 365 admin and extrapolated from my knowledge of Intune.
The way I see it, there is nothing actually preventing Microsoft from blocking computers from using personal 365.
Just look at the autopilot service in intune, you add a machine to it using either a machine ID or a serial number, then it is locked to that tenant and can’t be used outside of that with windows.
There is no checking of actual ownership of the device, and once a device is added to autopilot, it will prompt for a tenant logon even after a complete reinstall.
This means that MS will check any computer that checks in with their servers for their ID and s/n, and against a blocklist.
I would water there are internal controls, but I think your larger points is you could theoretically get around those controls with enough… Skills and/or the right internal people.
I mean there’s no sources cause (as far as I can tell) Microsoft isnt planning on nuking their market share.
But with 365, you get the cloud subscription. So that means OneDrive and Office files/emails being accessible in the cloud. Which, to be fair, is largely a really useful thing and besides OneDrive being a piece of shit program I don’t hear any complaints about that being available.
Then when you install Windows it grabs a bunch of hardware IDs. This is things like what memory, CPU, graphics, drives, etc that you have installed and creates a “hardware key” that allows you to activate windows. When it does this, it sends that information off to Microsoft. According to Microsoft, it’s to stop you from using a license key multiple times. But in my experience it doesn’t really matter anymore.
But theoretically (and I really can’t stress how far fetched this really is) Microsoft could mark your account as inactive which would cause you to lose access to all of your cloud files, and could theoretically (again, i can’t stress how unlikely this is) brick your OS install. Then if you try to reinstall, it would already know your computer and prevent the installer from continuing.
And again, I know I’ve beaten this horse, but the chances of this happening are so close to zero, they may as well be.