> The third dark pattern is OneDrive secretely downloading 280GB of photos and videos without once realising this was way more data than her root drive could store.
That's not a dark pattern, it's just a failure in software development. Microsoft doesn't get anything from overflowing your disk.
pavel_lishin · 25m ago
No, but re-enabling OneDrive might qualify.
beering · 1h ago
The past few years I’ve been hearing crazy stories of workarounds and scripts to deal with all these new features in Windows. Isn’t that what was preventing people from using Linux? Replacing utilman.exe with cmd.exe is not something a normal user would ever do.
Krssst · 18m ago
Protect yourself, use a local account. Windows 11 does not allow this but Rufus will help when you create your Windows installation media. And obviously never enter your Microsoft account credentials into any Microsoft app until you're certain it won't be linked to your local account.
Lammy · 11m ago
> The one idea I still have left is to enable the hidden administrator account in Windows 11, which gives you password-free access to what is basically Windows’ root account.
Pardon my pedantry, but technically Windows' equivalent of the root account is `NT AUTHORITY\SYSTEM`, although it's a little different in that it isn't an account one can use to Logon. You're right that `Administrator` is the highest privilege level interactive user account :) https://security.stackexchange.com/a/66747
This garbage and more is the reason I did my Framework 12's installation of Windows 11 (dual booting with FreeBSD 15) using this `unattend.xml` generator to disable internet requirement, disable mandatory Microsoft Account, disable intrusive spyware, disable disable disable: https://schneegans.de/windows/unattend-generator/
Sucks to have such an adversarial relationship with my own computer though. One shouldn't have to Know All The Tricks to avoid this shit.
That's not a dark pattern, it's just a failure in software development. Microsoft doesn't get anything from overflowing your disk.
Pardon my pedantry, but technically Windows' equivalent of the root account is `NT AUTHORITY\SYSTEM`, although it's a little different in that it isn't an account one can use to Logon. You're right that `Administrator` is the highest privilege level interactive user account :) https://security.stackexchange.com/a/66747
This garbage and more is the reason I did my Framework 12's installation of Windows 11 (dual booting with FreeBSD 15) using this `unattend.xml` generator to disable internet requirement, disable mandatory Microsoft Account, disable intrusive spyware, disable disable disable: https://schneegans.de/windows/unattend-generator/
Sucks to have such an adversarial relationship with my own computer though. One shouldn't have to Know All The Tricks to avoid this shit.