Microsoft never learns, IT admins rage as a new OneDrive app invades Windows 11 and keeps coming back when you remove it
https://www.windowslatest.com/2026/08/04/microsoft-never-learns-it-admins-rage-as-a-new-onedrive-app-invades-windows-11-and-keeps-coming-back-when-you-remove-it/Open linkView original on piefed.ca
143 replies
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.
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?)
If any of your Linux machines use SystemD,
then Microsoft has done thatthen 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
Source?
See discussion below. I’m making it up obviously
Tell me more. I may have to move to a distro without systemdeez.
machine-id
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.
Absolutely zero reason a init system needs admin date of birth. Yes separate issue entirely, but it’s showing a trend and the direction things are headed.
https://blog.bofh.it/debian/id_473
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.
To support and to need are two different verbs. Linux also needs your phone number in the user metadata by the same standard.
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.
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.
Wow, that's how it managed to find "malware" (not actual malware) in a password protected rar that I shared
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.
Pay for it twice actually, Microsoft charges you to install that spyware on your computer as well.
Well if I'm already paying for Windows, I might as well use it, right? /s
You say /s, but that's the literal exact reason that Microsoft has all the market share.
What do you mean I'm out of space? I just bought an external hard drive on Thursday!
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
It has almost never failed. We added 254092 ifelse statements, ensuring every possible state will be dealt with. It only fails if the user does something unexpected, like clicking too fast. Damn. That makes 254093.
Lol, that's the lede defense.
It’s not a “web app”. It’s a native Windows app. A photo library app that indexes every single photo so you can search them with natural language like “green shirt”, group people by facial recognition, and edit photos, using under 1GB of RAM is impressive.
Is it actually doing it in-device? Given that it's attached to OneDrive, I was rather under the impression that it was just offloading the processing to their servers.
Doesn’t really matter where it’s doing what. It’s displaying it all on device. It’s caching stuff on device.
It does matter if you don't want your shit in the cloud.
Why are you using onedrive if you don’t want your stuff in the cloud?
I don't use it because I know they're going to be nosing around whatever I put in there. If it was truly just file storage I would consider it but they can't keep their grubby hands off our data. My comment regarding this photos app is the same idea. If it could be used 100% locally and wasn't also being used to train some AI model or whatever other bullshit they're doing with it then it would be fine. People have a right to know how their data is being used.
If the "native" Windows app it's running on a dedicated browser and coded with web tech, it's still a web app even if it's an .exe
Did you know that Picasa could still group people by facial recognition in windows XP with 1 gb of ram in TOTAL? (Clarifying: 1gb to the whole system, not only a single app)
And are you sure that the indexing is running locally? Because it's called "onedrive photos", not "windows photos", so they can totally do the indexing on the cloud.
It’s a native Windows app. What makes you think it’s “coded with web tech”? Do you know it’s just a web wrapper?
some of the reasons why it's not a native app:
You really need to ask someone who knows what React is about React lol. It is not a UI for web apps.
Using “web based components” doesn’t make something a web app 🤣.
Is steam a web app?
Microsoft also made and use this……
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/dev-environment/javascript/react-native-for-windows
Shill harder, we need to deliver more shareholder value
Shill? Explaining why something isn’t a “web app” is shilling now? Geez you commies are getting really loose with your definitions now.
Yeah 1GB of RAM is completely insane for a photo app, should be like 50MB unless it's actively running face recognition or other ML stuff.
One drive was the final kick that made me jump to Linux. I had removed all my files from it and turned it off several times over the last few years then randomly, something like The Sims 2 will have a brand new game file and I know, One Drive stole my documents... Again.
Well the most recent time they took all my shit and put it back in One Drive was after that update where randomly One Drive was glitching out hardcore. It deleted all my files. All the files that should not have been in there to begin with. Microsoft help basically said, too bad so sad, if you were paying for it maybe we would help you.
I installed Mint that day. Haven't been back.
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.
We've noticed you unpinned the apps. We're sure you didn't mean to, so we fixed it for you. You're welcome.
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.
Are you sure it wasn't your workplace group policy bringing them back?
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.
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.
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.
The decade of the Linux Desktop, sponsored by Windows11
If it continues like this, it very well might ne some day. One can dream and hope...
At least for now, One can drive 😃
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.
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.
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.
Won't work for Win11 Home. But it's MASterly easy to conver your Home to Pro or even Enterprise. MASterly easy.
Nice pun but might as well link to it. It's already MASsively popular.
https://github.com/massgravel/Microsoft-Activation-Scripts
For the people on mobile without needle-like fingers.
Right ... you're operating your touchscreen with your dick again, aren't you?
We're on World right now, they kinda frown on that kinda thing here, might be why they didn't link it.
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.
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.
https://lemmy.today/comment/25761328
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.
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.
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
Stop using Windows
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
Your data is living on borrowed time as it is if you don't have it backed up already.
Two is one and one is none.
this has been a thing for years, I remember having to uninstall it so many times, back when I had windows, I mean. :P
so mac or distro?
Take it one step further. Linux on mac.
OneNote too. That was the final nail in the coffin for me over a year ago when I said fuck this and switched to Linux.
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.
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.
always the EU.
They've certainly improved things for people globally with their rulings.
Dropped Microsoft a long time ago. Loving every second of it.
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.
Fuck Microsoft, FUCK
Fuck Google, FUCK
Fuck Capitalism, FUCK
Make a script that checks for it and removes it? Linux has its pains but it doesn't have these pains.
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.
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.
I’d rather not use windows than have to do what you’re doing to keep it functional.
Ok. Then don't use windows. Sounds good.
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.
Well there ya go. All of your problems are solved.
Seems a lot more annoying than just using linux instead.
Meh. I like things my way. There's a certain satisfaction there.
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.
Just say Fuck Microslop at this point, plenty of beginner distros for Linux nowadays. Sucks for company employees that force it though. Hey CEOs I have money saving advice, Linux is free! You can even not go bankrupt to claude! lmfao.
Not true. You still very much have contracts with those companies be it RHEL or Ubuntu. It's less don't get me wrong, but not free. Like your small local shop could get away with it, but once you have regulatory oversight, things change.
I want to switch but I just can't give up winrar free trial
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.
There is one single app I need for freelance work that I cannot replace with a non-windows app.
It lives in a virtual machine and is shut down for 99% of its existence.
The machine that runs the VM is the one I use for local LLM and fucking around with docker containers. It’s an insanely powerful machine that’s slightly RAM constrained. I can run what feels like an unlimited amount of containers on it, or that fucking Windows VM. I have to kill every running container on the machine just to run one single Windows app for 10 minutes once or twice a week.
If my freelance work paid more, I’d buy a dedicated windows machine just to do this one fucking task. (And then I’d have to air-gap it, and figure out how to remotely start it somehow, because I don’t trust Windows at all, and don’t want it running all the time.)
Or, I guess… buy access to a windows VM online? Hm. The convenience/time/effort trade off could be worth it at certain price points.
this is a legit question, but why can't you run that program through wine? does it need a windows account validation step or something or does wine simply not work for that program?
I… guess I never thought of that.
I use MacOS (I know, I know), but I didn’t realize I could use WINE on Mac. I haven’t had a chance to investigate yet if I can make this work for me, but this was a good suggestion. I have this on my short list of stuff to figure out. Thank you!
Same boat. And my work laptop just got fucked by OneDrive again, very frustrating. I have no other qualms with windows, honestly, but stop moving my folders. My desktop is no longer my desktop, despite me reverting back and all that. And it's far from a big deal, it's just an annoyance at this point. But I'm stuck because of my incredibly niche software.
I’ve faced this situation at work, we deployed a dedicated windows VM that all the devs shared for the one tedious task. Eventually got replaced with a saner system and we had no Windows dependencies at all.
"learns" isn't the right word, they know you don't want it, like it, or need it. They don't care, a proper statement would be "microsoft never cares"
Once the leader of the pack. Now making it's way to the back.
I make golden images for Windows at work. Everything Microsoft annoys/pissed me off.
I make golden showers out of windows at work. We are not the same!
Me too. Such a pain in the ass.
What's your capture/deployment tool?
Packer/Terraform for all VM's on all providers
I dislike this article because it hides important facts until the last section: "I am in touch with Microsoft about OneDrive Photos, and my early findings suggest that it was an unintended rollout. An apology should be coming soon."
So, this journalist/news site shames Microsoft for doing something shitty, while doing something shitty themselves.
After how many "unintentional mishaps, woops teehee won't do it again" can it be held against MS?
It's weird how every time a company does something they're known for doing and it's badly received they claim it was an unintentional rollout.
micwosowft is just a smol bean
Strong disagree. Microsoft does this on the regular. They get no credit for their repeated 'we're sorry'.
Southpark: "We're sorry"
You disagree with what? Do you think it is great journalism to hide that information to the very end of the article?
MS clearly did something shitty, not arguing about that.
If memory serves me right. This is like the fourth unintended rollout in OneDrive history, on W11 at least. Every time our IT has to send an email to remind all staff how to disable computer wide backup and how to disable OneDrive in general. Since we don't pay for it but MS still insist it should infect everything.
Each of these unintended rollout costs us millions of dollars of people's time, since our organization has hundreds of thousands of employees all over the world.
Literally malware
It was not an unintended rollout, that's them lying to save whatever face they may have left.
Back when I used windows, OneNote would reinstall itself like every week. I removed it, it came back. I corrupted all of it's files, it repaired itself.
This is just the bullshit that Microsoft does.
nah, incompetence at this level deserves shame
Agreed, but not my argument.
Doing unintended rollouts is also shameful. They're a billion dollar corporation. There's absolutely no excuse for something like that to happen. The journalist did nothing wrong to call them out.
It’s very unprofessional by MS and they should be shamed for it, I’m not arguing against that. I’m only saying I think this article is bad.
What shitty thing did the author do? Regardless of if this rollout was intentional or not, they did do it, and there's no excusing that An apology doesn't change anything.
I write that in my first sentence : "I dislike this article because it hides important facts until the last section"
You also make it sound like I'm defending MS - that confuse me quite a bit too since I'm actually stating in my comment that they did something shitty.
Clear now?
That's not a particularly important fact. The important fact is that they did push this and there was nothing the users could do about it. Their apology doesn't mean anything when they keep doing this shit.
I see it differently, I think it makes quite a difference whether it was intentional or not.
Then you're a fool. Every wrong these corporations commit should be met with as much hostility as we can muster. They don't deserve our grace. If they could hook us all up to tubes and drain our blood for profit while blasting us with ads they would do it without even thinking twice. We're nothing to them.
A few years ago:
Me: Why can't I remove Edge?
IT Elitist: Because you have cheap peasant Home edition. They don't pull this crap on Pro and Business editions.
Theyvemoved on to 11. You should either still be on 10 or on Linux.
It isn’t in charge of what windows is, Microsoft is. If you don’t like the product use a different product.
Makes me so glad I moved to Linux. Windows has just gotten worse and worse.
Their own f*cking fault. Anyone still using that garbage corp/software are just asking for it. Stop whining about your own decisions, start migrating to a non-psycho open OS. Please, spare other people from the guaranteed problems coming from your own stupid choices.
It did this on Windows 10 as well, I don't know why this is all of a sudden some kind of surprise.
Oh, they learn all right: "hey, we can pull so much bullshit off and they still pay us. Let's do more next time"
Yeah this is a precursor to some other bullshit
I most certainly did uninstall one drive.
Yes, by using selecting format disk in the Linux installer.
If you are still using Windows 11, for enterprise, and things like this surprise you... you are an idiot, and are bad at your job.
Or, perhaps some sysadmins are swamped with trying to keep the lights on and they don't have the bandwidth to read Microsoft's news and prepare.
Oh my bad i forgot to add masochist to my list
Downvote and insult me as long and as much as you like, but I refuse to call anyone who works with Window$ an 'IT admin'.
That's a pretty limited POV
Well, considering it's damn near 100% of the environment, I'd say anyone who doesn't work with Windows isn't really an IT admin.
I've been looking for jobs to get started in Linux administration, and I gotta tell you, the handful of times I see it mentioned is as a single line in the footer of the job posting.
My problem with this particular argument is that M$ attained this dominance not because of the quality of its products, or because its C-suites are geniuses, but by decades of lobbying and monopolistic market practice.
And if you're not a Chystler mechanic you're not an auto mechanic gosh darn it.