Microsoft has started marking local Windows 11 accounts as potentially “bad.” Don’t worry; you have no problem. It is a new attempt to pressure users to use Microsoft ID accounts instead, which in turn leads to using their own services (OneDrive, Office…) against those of the competition.
Microsoft has long been accused of using ‘dark patterns‘ to push Windows users to choose options that the company prefers over those that users would choose without any pressure. A dark pattern is a user interface that has been carefully designed to achieve that goal.
The local accounts of Windows 11 are in the spotlight, as were those of Windows 10. Microsoft complicates the life of users by forcing them to use ID accounts by default during the installation of the operating system and although there are solutions to solve the process, they are not all users know it.
Now back to the load adding a red “X” in the profile picture of local accounts as you can see in the cover image. This makes it appear that the account or the system itself has a major problem, but when the user clicks on it, they find advertising for OneDrive and other Microsoft products. This configuration has been detected in Windows 11 Developer build 23419 from the end of March. Microsoft did not report this in the official changelog.
Say that Windows 11 can work with a local account created by the user or with a Microsoft ID account. The operation of some features of the operating system and its administration changes depending on whether we select one or the other. An online account has advantages such as a better connection with Microsoft cloud applications and services, better synchronization with other devices or access to additional functions.
However, a local account has other not minor advantages, such as not being linked to an online identity that can be hacked. Not to mention its higher degree of privacy, one of the most controversial points of the latest Windows 11 whose telemetry and data collection is higher than what would be recommended.
You know our opinion. Microsoft should inform the advantages of each type of accounts and put them in the same place in a transparent way so that it is the user who chooses the one they prefer. All these dark patterns are “tricks” (some of them very crude and not expected from a company like Microsoft) that do not respect customers. Hopefully this type of procedure will be removed and not reach the stable channel.
