IT admins rage as Microsoft force-installs OneDrive Photos on Windows 11, and it keeps coming back when you remove it.
  • wuffah@lemmy.worldEnglish
    19 days

    Fun fact: Microsoft will try to guess your passwords to open and scan your encrypted archives when uploaded to OneDrive.

    Microsoft also hands your BitLocker recovery keys to the government on request.

    Microsoft also uses your local machine’s GDID to deanonymize and track you across the internet for the government.

    These are paid surveillance services Microsoft provides to the government, paid for by your tax dollars. No wonder they desperately want to force you to use OneDrive.

    • kescusay@lemmy.worldEnglish
      19 days

      Hey now! I can honestly say Microsoft has never done that with any of my computers!

      (Why yes, they do all run Linux. How did you know?)

      • notfromhere@lemmy.mlEnglish
        19 days

        If any of your Linux machines use SystemD, then Microsoft has done that then there’s something to be aware of with those machines. SystemD has a global system ID that can be used like the Windows GDID apparently.

        Edit: not MS

        • bender223@lemmy.todayEnglish
          19 days

          Tell me more. I may have to move to a distro without systemdeez.

            • Whostosay@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
              19 days

              Okay but correlate that with the same methods and usage and by the same threat actor (MS) in this case.

              Or any of the combination, as a treat

              I’m not saying it’s impossible, but it’s extremely implausible.

                • Whostosay@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
                  19 days

                  To be fair, yeah that shit is egregious.

                  But that’s not at all what I asked you or what you claimed. Those are technically two different things. And not technically like yes or no. Those are entirely different security fronts.

                  You’ve got to back that claim up or take it back, and I have a feeling you’ll be taking it back.

                  It’s okay to be cautious, and it’s especially okay to warn others of trajectories that could lean into privacy or security issues, but it’s not okay to make shit up.

                  Lastly it’s no longer an init system. It’s a system that happens to handle init.

                • ViatorOmnium@piefed.socialEnglish
                  19 days

                  To support and to need are two different verbs. Linux also needs your phone number in the user metadata by the same standard.

    • CosmoNova@lemmy.worldEnglish
      19 days

      Zipping files was never enough to secure them in the cloud. It‘s always recommended to properly encrypt sensitive data properly before you upload it. Whether you use OneDrive, Google Drive, Proton drive or whatever.

      Still amazing how far Microslop goes to sniff through your stuff preemptively, though. Your cloud storage should be none of their business but sadly it‘s their entire business now. Privacy laws should definitely extend to digital space you rent no matter the circumstances.

      If cloud providers argue that‘s too dangerous then they simply shouldn‘t be in business. If a government says it‘s too dangerous then they shouldn‘t be in power. Obviously they don‘t trust in the people who voted for them. Therefore they don‘t trust democracy and are therefore fundamentally undemocratic and a danger to the people.

      • blackbeans@lemmy.zipEnglish
        19 days

        ZIP encryption can be pretty strong, as long as you use aes-256 and not zipcrypt. AES256 had been supported for ZIP files since 2003, just not in the built-in Windows zip handling.

    • Wispy2891@lemmy.worldEnglish
      19 days

      Wow, that’s how it managed to find “malware” (not actual malware) in a password protected rar that I shared

      • black0ut@pawb.socialEnglish
        19 days

        To be fair, a lot of platforms just flag any encrypted archive file (not just rar) as malware. Their argument is that those files are commonly used to get past malware detection, which is kinda true. Still a pain for everyone who has a legitimate need for the feature.

    • Bytemeister@lemmy.worldEnglish
      18 days

      Pay for it twice actually, Microsoft charges you to install that spyware on your computer as well.

    • XLE@piefed.socialBanned from communityEnglish
      19 days

      Well if I’m already paying for Windows, I might as well use it, right? /s

      • Lost_My_Mind@lemmy.worldEnglish
        19 days

        You say /s, but that’s the literal exact reason that Microsoft has all the market share.

      • Midnight Wolf@lemmy.world
        English
        19 days

        What do you mean I’m out of space? I just bought an external hard drive on Thursday!

  • Wispy2891@lemmy.worldEnglish
    19 days

    Unlike traditional web apps, OneDrive Photos is actually quite well built. It has a Windows 11-like Acrylic design for the context menu and does not take up a huge amount of resources, as RAM usage stays under 1GB

    Excuse me, a photo gallery that takes 1gb of RAM, especially in this economy, doesn’t seem “quite well built”.

    This fucking web app wrappers, Picasa had 100x more features while using 50x less resources

  • Rhaedas@fedia.io
    19 days

    That sounds a lot like typical Windows features over the years. Using WIndows at work today I unpinned Co-pilot and that stupid new Notes app from my taskbar three times. They kept coming back, not right away, but ninja like.

    • 𝕸𝖔𝖘𝖘@infosec.pubEnglish
      19 days

      We’ve noticed you unpinned the apps. We’re sure you didn’t mean to, so we fixed it for you. You’re welcome.

    • _spiffy@piefed.caEnglish
      19 days

      Our O365 admin panel keeps telling me there is a problem because 0 of our employees can easily find copilot and I could fix it by forcing it to be pinned to the taskbar.

      • frongt@lemmy.zipEnglish
        19 days

        Unlikely. Microsoft took away GPO control of taskbar and start menu a while back, and I don’t think they restored it. And even if they did, a company would be more likely unpin and block them than to push them.

        • SmokedBillionaire@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
          19 days

          I’d love to think that, but my company is currently holding weeklong seminars to make sure that every employee is using Copilot and ChatGPT as much as possible.

        • CameronDev@programming.devEnglish
          19 days

          I’ll taken your word for it, but if taskbar and start menu were controllable, I’m pretty sure after the third “I’ve deleted the internet/copilot/notes” support call I would be enforcing that the default taskbar items stay there.

          Some companies might be resisting copilot, but many are going all in on it.

  • unitedwithme@lemmy.todayEnglish
    19 days

    So does Copilot and Microsoft Copilot 365. I enforce GPOs to ban/remove them, and every couple Windows updates, it reinstalls, and each next day I see my alerts pop up they’re back.

  • Hal-5700X@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
    19 days

    How to turn off OneDrive with Group Policy.

    Press Windows + R, type gpedit.msc, and press Enter. Navigate to User Configuration > Administrative Templates > Windows Components > OneDrive.

    • Save documents to OneDrive by default: Disabled
    • Prevent OneDrive from generating network traffic until the user signs in to OneDrive: Enabled
    • Prevent the usage of OneDrive for file storage: Enabled

    The last setting disables OneDrive on your system; make sure to change it to Disabled if you use OneDrive.

    Restart your computer for the changes to take effect.

    • 𝕸𝖔𝖘𝖘@infosec.pubEnglish
      19 days

      Won’t work for Win11 Home. But it’s MASterly easy to conver your Home to Pro or even Enterprise. MASterly easy.

    • artyom@piefed.socialEnglish
      19 days

      Every Windows debloater script comes with the caveat of “until the next update”. Instead of becoming a Windows Defucking Engineer I just left it entirely.

      • wizardbeard@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
        19 days

        Except that these are group policy settings. The stuff they provide to allow businesses to manage their endpoints. Businesses that actually have enough size and money for Microsoft to care. Businesses that can have strict audit and data security requirements relating to things like not allowing data to even brush against something like OneDrive.

        To be more direct, the only reason I can’t count the number of times they’ve broken a Group Policy is because I legitimately don’t recall it happening in the past decade.

          • wizardbeard@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
            18 days

            Fair enough. I work in IT but endpoint config and group policy isn’t my area at work, so most of my experience is with my personal computers at home. I at least usually hear the latest bullshit Microsoft is pulling from our endpoint management/config guy.

            I should also bear in mind that I stripped down and customized the hell out of the install media before I last installed Windows on any of my devices, and I’ve run a shit ton of other customization/privacy/debloat tools afterwards as well. Usually by examining the policy and registry edits or PowerShell code they run and just picking and choosing parts for myself. Lots of good tools out there, but none I trust to do exactly what I want with no oversight or investigation.

            I’d still say that Group Policy is usually the best option for configuration shit sticking though, due to it being Microsoft’s “business side” solution for endpoint config for quite a while now.

        • Elvith Ma'for@feddit.orgEnglish
          19 days

          Yes and no. They started to limit GPOs. Some are only valid on Enterprise Licenses or Windows Server and will be ignored by your usual Windows Pro License at home. With Windows Home, you’re SOL regarding GPOs.

          Also they started to migrate some of these settings to their Intune Device Management and will ignore those if not set via Intune.

          Read: Companies can still disenshittify Windows to some degree, but they make it harder and harder for normal people to do so.

  • BackgrndNoize@lemmy.worldEnglish
    17 days

    Yesterday I found that my C drive was almost completely full and that was causing issues, digging into it I would that somehow a bug in One drives logging had generated almost 30 GB of logs, and the funny part is I have OneDrive disabled on my laptop. Tech has become such a toxic shithole field I wish I picked a different career

      • BackgrndNoize@lemmy.worldEnglish
        17 days

        I want to but I don’t have enough external storage to back my data before wiping off windows and doing a clean Linux install, need to buy some hard drives first, hoping this AI scam hasn’t inflated the prices on those as well

  • liking625@lemmy.worldEnglish
    19 days

    this has been a thing for years, I remember having to uninstall it so many times, back when I had windows, I mean. :P

  • A_Random_Idiot@lemmy.worldEnglish
    17 days

    There has got to be a lawsuit against this shit.

    There was a massive lawsuit for simply including IE in the install as default, and this is 100 times worse than that.

    • f4f4f4f4f4f4f4f4@sopuli.xyzEnglish
      17 days

      Nowadays, all you have to do to get your antitrust lawsuits conveniently forgotten is agree to lock down your company’s OS and share your data with the US government, like Google.

      • A_Random_Idiot@lemmy.worldEnglish
        17 days

        always the EU.

        They’ve certainly improved things for people globally with their rulings.

    • mobyduck648@lemmy.worldEnglish
      17 days

      Windows-free since 2014 in my case! Hated Windows 8’s user experience enough that I decided KDE was a better windows than windows and never looked back.

      In 2026 Plasma 6 is genuinely in the conversation for the best graphical environment for the desktop platform in general, partly because it’s very good and partly because Apple and Microsoft have let standards slip a lot in my view.

  • Zephyr@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
    18 days

    Make a script that checks for it and removes it? Linux has its pains but it doesn’t have these pains.

    • GreenKnight23@lemmy.worldEnglish
      18 days

      almost 20 years ago I wrote a service that did this because of a hijacker. After I cleaned the system I extended it to stop all the MS bullshit that just wouldn’t stop running.

  • dbtng@eviltoast.orgEnglish
    19 days

    I corrupt the files. I take ownership, remove inheritance, and then deny Trusted Installer and System access. My windows systems generally have several components neutered like this. Major upgrades will sometimes overwrite my changes, but mostly they stick. Absolutely nonfunctional.

    • witness_me@lemmy.mlEnglish
      19 days

      I’d rather not use windows than have to do what you’re doing to keep it functional.

        • witness_me@lemmy.mlEnglish
          19 days

          I already don’t. I’ve run Linux as my main OS on home computers for 3-4 years now, and I use MacOS for work.

      • dbtng@eviltoast.orgEnglish
        19 days

        Meh. I like things my way. There’s a certain satisfaction there.

    • RisingSwell@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
      18 days

      You can also just use a program to block data access. I have like 15 Microsoft processes barred from the internet because fuck off from my limited data.

  • cloudless.@fedia.io
    19 days

    Back in the day, I had my photos in multiple locations, some on local external drives, some in small cloud storage pockets….a bit of mess, really. Since I had a great deal on O365 family plan I thought - why not gather all of my various photo collections, and consolidate them on a single cloud storage - what could possibly go wrong? This is how I discovered that OneDrive doesn’t know how to read EXIF metadata properly. I ended up with basically a pile of over 30k pictures and videos, completely out of any order. Never again.