this post was submitted on 25 Mar 2025
132 points (97.1% liked)

Ask Lemmy

30419 readers
1091 users here now

A Fediverse community for open-ended, thought provoking questions


Rules: (interactive)


1) Be nice and; have funDoxxing, trolling, sealioning, racism, and toxicity are not welcomed in AskLemmy. Remember what your mother said: if you can't say something nice, don't say anything at all. In addition, the site-wide Lemmy.world terms of service also apply here. Please familiarize yourself with them


2) All posts must end with a '?'This is sort of like Jeopardy. Please phrase all post titles in the form of a proper question ending with ?


3) No spamPlease do not flood the community with nonsense. Actual suspected spammers will be banned on site. No astroturfing.


4) NSFW is okay, within reasonJust remember to tag posts with either a content warning or a [NSFW] tag. Overtly sexual posts are not allowed, please direct them to either !asklemmyafterdark@lemmy.world or !asklemmynsfw@lemmynsfw.com. NSFW comments should be restricted to posts tagged [NSFW].


5) This is not a support community.
It is not a place for 'how do I?', type questions. If you have any questions regarding the site itself or would like to report a community, please direct them to Lemmy.world Support or email info@lemmy.world. For other questions check our partnered communities list, or use the search function.


6) No US Politics.
Please don't post about current US Politics. If you need to do this, try !politicaldiscussion@lemmy.world or !askusa@discuss.online


Reminder: The terms of service apply here too.

Partnered Communities:

Tech Support

No Stupid Questions

You Should Know

Reddit

Jokes

Ask Ouija


Logo design credit goes to: tubbadu


founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
 

Could they do it? Deactivate Windows licenses, block Cloud services, access to Office 365 and whatnot?

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] pivot_root@lemmy.world 3 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago) (2 children)

Source? That would be useful for helping convince friends/family to switch to Linux and LibreOffice.

[–] stoy@lemmy.zip 3 points 3 days ago (1 children)

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.

[–] Lizardking13@lemmy.world 1 points 3 days ago

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.

[–] Lv_InSaNe_vL@lemmy.world 1 points 3 days ago

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.