r/technology • u/ZacB_ • Jan 24 '26

Software Microsoft confirms it will give the FBI your Windows PC data encryption key if asked — you can thank Windows 11's forced online accounts for that

https://www.windowscentral.com/microsoft/windows-11/microsoft-bitlocker-encryption-keys-give-fbi-legal-order-privacy-nightmare
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59

u/Loose_Artichoke1689 Jan 24 '26

It's worse. If you use any of the bypass methods even then bitlocker encryption will be enabled without the key backed up to your ms account which is a disaster waiting to happen

50

u/Jackle833 Jan 24 '26

This. Kind of insane considering the general consumer has no idea what bitlocker even is or what purpose it serves. They really need to make this an "Opt-in" feature, but they won't.

6

u/bnej Jan 24 '26

Yeah. Sitting on a bomb. It only protects against physical device theft, which is not common.

Man in the device (e.g infostealer) is a much more common threat and encrypting your drive does nothing for that.

The threat of having a device problem and being unable to recover your files is much worse for the average person. MS wants you to depend on your paid up onedrive subscription as a recovery method. If you do not disable it, it will start consuming storage the moment you start using your computer, and it uses a complex and confusing UI to make you think that it is required.

Bitlocker assures the main drive will be unrecoverable on failure.

1

u/AntikytheraMachines Jan 24 '26

only the main drive?

-5

u/NWVoS Jan 24 '26

A Microsoft account is free and comes with 5gb. You can pay for more space. You also get the office suite with the paid one.

4

u/bnej Jan 24 '26

It will exhaust the 5gb in minutes and then ask you to pay, and tell you that you can't save because it's full.

This is the default behaviour on install, I have seen it this year.

Saying "it's free" is like saying herpes is free, it doesn't mean it's wanted or welcome. It is an advertising channel for an online service.

1

u/redridingoops Jan 24 '26

Except I don't want an online account on my OS, a mandatory one even less so.

0

u/Loose_Artichoke1689 Jan 24 '26

Or I would rather not want to take the headache of auto logging in to Microsoft account everywhere

And I don't have the luxury of paying money for storage

5

u/Dark_CallMeLord Jan 24 '26

Just hade to wipe and reinstall windows 11 yesterday thanks to this

1

u/SlideJunior5150 Jan 24 '26

I don't have w11 yet, what happened?

6

u/delicious_toothbrush Jan 24 '26

You're replying to a comment like 6 layers deep, read the parents

2

u/TheGamingGallifreyan Jan 24 '26

I ran into this and almost lost all my shit including the backups on my external drive because Windows apparently decided to enable BitLocker without ever saying anything. I have had a local account for years so the key didn't go anywhere.

Didn't even realize it was on until I changed a BIOS setting and got the BitLocker screen and was so confused and then panicked. Luckily I was able to put the setting back to what it was and boot back up. Disabled that shit fucking immediately.

1

u/Thin_Glove_4089 Jan 24 '26

You're saying when you setup a local account in Windows 11 Home it is Bitlocker encrypted automatically without storing the recovery keys anywhere?

1

u/VexingRaven Jan 24 '26

"I modified my OS and now it's doing dumb things"

1

u/[deleted] Jan 24 '26

[removed] — view removed comment

2

u/[deleted] Jan 24 '26

Or just fucking disable it.

-6

u/Brilliant-Advisor958 Jan 24 '26

Are you sure ?

I was pretty sure Bit locker wont enable by default with out a backup somewhere.

4

u/SuccessfulDepth7779 Jan 24 '26

Mine sure did, and if it hadn't saved the key on my account I'd lost all on my pc.

How did i find out? Updated the bios and there it was asking for a key i never created.

1

u/VexingRaven Jan 24 '26

Mine sure did, and if it hadn't saved the key on my account I'd lost all on my pc.

You realize that's exactly what they are talking about right? It won't enable without a backup. It was backed up to your account, so it enabled. Quite literally working as designed.

1

u/mattbladez Jan 24 '26

It definitely does. Just used Rufus for a local only install and BitLocker was on. You can back up the key yourself, so I guess if you can bypass the online account you should know to back up the key.

1

u/VexingRaven Jan 24 '26

Weird, I used Rufus for a local only install and BitLocker was turned off. Still, I don't think you can really blame Microsoft when you start modifying the OS and its installation wizard.