Create an MS Family to share your computing resources

Topic

New Reply

ISSUE 16.26.0 • 2019-07-15 Help: customersupport@askwoody.com The AskWoody Plus Newsletter In this issue WINDOWS 10: Create an MS Family to share
[See the full post at: Create an MS Family to share your computing resources]

1 user thanked author for this post.

woody

Reply | Quote

Replies

Spyware as a service, gotta love it. “Click here, it’s free, and we’ll do all the heavy lifting for you. – We’ll monitor your spouse, your kids and your friends. We’ll link everyone you know into one big group and tell all of our advertising buddies and security friends all about you and everyone who knows you. In return, you can watch your screen flicker alluringly as we do our thing.”
What could go wrong? I don’t know when and I don’t know how but I am sure that all of you compulsive joiners will someday regret all this linking you do. Smartphones, social media, family groups, them there is a whole lot of open curtains on your daily lives that you choose to share mostly because you are too lazy to secure your internet use, the benefits of privacy really haven’t been well defined in the last 18 years and of course no one looks past the shiny trinket they are offered and all they have to do is click here and identify themselves.
Share away family and friends. You don’t trust Microsoft to update your computer or collect telemetry but you trust them enough to monitor your kids and scrutinize everything you share with the group over yet another nonessential adhoc network hosted by Mr. Softy.
Sigh…

Reply | Quote

The convenience and shared costs of a Family Account must be balanced against the need to remain always-connected. In order to use the Office 365 subscription, you need to log in using a Microsoft Account.  This isn’t always possible or practical, and it does use extra bandwidth from your ISP or cell carrier.

Also, privacy issues are multiplied when you log in with a Microsoft Account. Don’t use an Administrator Account as a Microsoft Account! The people at the Microsoft Store always tell you to do exactly this.

But if you remain aware of the hidden bandwidth costs and the added privacy risks, this arrangement is actually a good deal. And it allows parents to keep tabs on how their kids are using their accounts.

-- rc primak

Reply | Quote

Free will and all that. I’m all for informed decision making. If someone wishes to give up something for the sake of a convenience or a useful service, who am I to say they can’t do that? However, I’d bet that 9 out of 10 people haven’t read the terms of service and cannot identify a single privacy factor they have traded away for this or any “good deal”.

We know whose fault that really is and people have to bear the responsibility for the decisions they make. However, please do not add me to your family group. Even if I decline your join request, thank you very much you have spilled some info about me to MS that they may not have had before (like the fact you know me). If you use a MS service to monitor your kids, who is really monitoring who?

Reply | Quote

I’m not asking you to join with this option. I just don’t think everyone wants or needs to be as careful as you want to be. And yes, people should be more aware of what they are giving up before connecting their personal accounts to the Cloud.

-- rc primak

Reply | Quote

Darn tooting people need to be careful. We are being taken advantage of at every turn. It is time that people are told in no uncertain terms over and over that using free stuff on the internet does have a cost and that cost is usually your privacy to a greater or lessor extent.

People need to be dragged kicking and screaming from their couches to the research and credible reports that outline just how evil social media and personal data gobbler companies can be. If Cambridge Analytica or report after report of the abuse foisted on android app users doesn’t cause someone’s forehead to furrow and precipitate a real and tangible reaction, then they clearly do not completely grasp the scope and nature of the problem. Too common these days, people not paying attention to what they are agreeing to. People not thinking about whether a “remind me to take a pill” app really needs to know their location, people deciding it is too hard or too inconvenient to replace evil software or websites with a better choice.

However, if people wish to sign up with Microsoft for a free email address or a family fun group, I just hope they have taken the time to really figure out just what the personal cost of doing so will be, both to them and those they choose to include/communicate without asking that person if they mind if MS stores and reads all of their email exchanges forever…

Without exception, these entities under the guise of making your life better and easier are not in it for you. They are doing so because they can profit. You and your data represent a dollar value and they make that money by helping their paying customers tear apart your life looking for things they can make you buy or make you believe.

It’s not a question of being too careful. Once a site has been hacked or has shared your data that they really had no valid reason for collecting an storing other than for resale, and your identity is stolen or your internet persona is hijacked, it’s way too late to be more careful.

Even this site is exchanging some of your data with google, gravatar, gstatic and others. If you don’t know this you are not being careful enough because you cannot make an informed decision about anything you do or say on this or any other site without knowing this info.

Reply | Quote

rc primak wrote:

In order to use the Office 365 subscription, you need to log in using a Microsoft Account.

I find this not to be the case.  I use Office 365, and I never log in using a Microsoft Account.

Perhaps you are referring to OneDrive, which does require a Microsoft Account login online, but that still doesn’t require logging in on my PC with a Microsoft Account.  I use local Standard user accounts exclusively.

Always create a fresh drive image before making system changes/Windows updates; you may need to start over!

We all have our own reasons for doing the things that we do with our systems; we don't need anyone's approval, and we don't all have to do the same things.

We were all once "Average Users".

Computer Specs

1 user thanked author for this post.

rc primak

Reply | Quote

[rc primak]

True. But for Family Sharing, which is the use this topic is focused on, you do need to have all users sign in with Microsoft Account credentials. You aren’t so much sharing the Office 365 subscription as sharing the Microsoft Account. That’s necessary for tracking kids’ activities, for one example.

-- rc primak

• This reply was modified 5 years, 10 months ago by rc primak.
• This reply was modified 5 years, 10 months ago by rc primak.

Reply | Quote