Don't use a Microsoft Account!

don't use a Microsoft account to access your own Windows computer that is like asking permission to drive your own car from your car dealership and then sending them a report on where you went and what you did there when you use a Microsoft account you're doing exactly that why why should Microsoft have any part in accessing the computer that you bought and paid for it makes no sense so what's going on well the are essentially two ways to access your computer when you set up your computer initially you were prompted to enter your Microsoft account as part of the setup process you either entered one that you created from your older computer or you used a Hotmail account if you're old like me or you would have created a new one at the time now every single time you open Windows you're prompted to enter your Microsoft account password so you can access your windows that's the first way and I would say probably the most common way the second way to access a computer is what is known as using a local account this is a username and password that you created on your computer that lives only on your computer okay since both methods allow you to access your computer why should you care which one you use and you are right but there are differences let's start with the Microsoft Account think of the Microsoft Account like your Google account you want to access Google drive from any device you can when you set up your Android phone and log into your Google account it will install the apps and carry over the settings and wallpaper from your old phone to your new phone the Microsoft account is no different the first time you set up your windows with your Microsoft account the apps that you installed from the Microsoft store and your preferences and personalization settings such as wallpaper would have been backed up to the Microsoft account and then reinstalled on your new comp computer when you use a Microsoft account you get various services such as one drive and you can back up and synchronize your data across devices another benefit of the Microsoft account is that you can use the find my device to track down your computer or laptop you can also log in to a central dashboard and manage your subscriptions and computers that you have activated and move your licenses from one computer to another those all sound pretty good but what about the local account well with a local account you can create multiple users on the same computer you can give each user either an administrator role or a standard regular user role based on their technical experience so you can create a regular user account for anyone who's maybe uh less Tech savy which means that they can only make major system changes or install software if they have the admin password this alone could save you headaches of having to fix that computer once again that your parents may or may not not have screwed up and of course having a regular account is also great protection against things like malware and various scams and with a local account you get more control and more privacy because you're not relying on Microsoft and privacy is where this whole Microsoft account versus a local account thing gets super interesting when you use a local account Microsoft has minimal data collection relating to the activity on your computer you aren't sending this information to the Microsoft servers whereas when you use a Microsoft account Microsoft collects data such as your location and app usage they use this to personalize your experience and to improve the product and it's no secret they actually tell you that in the feedback and diagnostic section and yes you can turn some of that off but even when you do there is literally an option that says you cannot turn it off unless you know how to hack the registry uh related to that there are a whole bunch of privacy settings that you can turn off but many people don't so they're feeding all this information to Microsoft and who knows who else uh just let me know in the comments if you'd like me to make a video about more privacy settings on your windows but I digress Microsoft account also tracks your activity across devices and services since you're using the same account this means that it allows them to build a more comprehensive profile on you and your usage and this is going to be used for many things included targeted advertising and recommendation again this is an option in Windows that you can turn off now with a local account this is very limited as there is no cross devices usage because you're using an account that only lives on the one computer and nowhere else so purely from a privacy point of view whilst I'm not buying that even with a local account Microsoft is completely shut out of your system you're certainly releasing less data to Microsoft but there are some trade off if you use a local account the biggest one is being locked out of your own computer if you're using a local account and you forget your own passwords to access Windows you have to answer your security questions uh frankly a lot of us have installed this long time ago I don't know if I can remember the answers to my questions if you can't do that you have to use the password reset dis which hopefully you created at some point and if you didn't create this at some point you're going to have to find workarounds and utilities to reset your password so watch out for that whereas if you're using a Microsoft account you can easily reset the password from any computer now one thing to note whilst it is rare I will say that I've seen this password reset on the Microsoft Account fail and when it does you are locked out of your Microsoft account and your computer and there is literally nothing you can do so you have to fight with Microsoft to get get it reset now another reason to have a local account and not a Microsoft account is because with a local account you could always sign into Windows even if you don't have internet access when you have a Microsoft account you have to connect to Microsoft so they can obviously verify that it's you much like if you're connecting to your bank's website you need to have an internet connection to be able to log into your account now you can get around this by setting up a Windows pin or a fingerprint option which in that case lives locally on your computer and you don't need internet access just something to be aware of you don't want to discover this when you're stuck on a plane and you can't even access your own computer okay so with all this back and forth between the various account what is the right account to use well here is the best bit you don't have to choose you can actually use both what I recommend is that you access your Windows computer with a local account and and have a Microsoft account so that you can access features that you want without being a data collection Source when you want to access your computer you use the local account but when you want to access things like one drive or the Microsoft apps you can still do that by logging into those services like you do with any other website or service you get the best of both worlds and it's easy to switch between the two so let me show you how to create a local account and let me show you how to switch between the Microsoft account and the local account so the first thing you want to do is type ReStore in the search bar and click on create a restore point and then choose create and now we're going to give it a name we're going to give something like before changing to a local account and then click on create now I've never ever seen a data being lost this way but whenever we make a major change to the computer it's always smart to create a quick restore point in case something goes horribly wrong okay now that that's successfully created next thing we want to do is we want to close this down and we're going to go to the search bar and we're going to type there account and we're going to choose manage your account and now on the screen we're going to click on sign in with a local account instead and it says are you sure you want to switch to a local account because of all these benefits that you get using a Microsoft account yes we're going to choose on next and then of course we just have to authenticate to make sure that we actually have permissions to make such a major change to this computer once we've done that it's going to ask us to enter information about this local account so let's put in the name the password and then a password hint and then once that's done we're going to just click on next and then just follow the prompts on the screen okay new scenario now we logged in with a local account and we want to change to a Microsoft account so same screen we're going to sign in with a Microsoft account instead we're going to click on that and then it's going to ask us to put put in our username and password and authenticate and that's as simple as that okay now you're probably going to see a bunch of comments about other benefits or of course other major issues with Microsoft my mission isn't to convince you to do one thing or another I just want you to be aware so you can make the right choice for you so let me know if you want to see a video about which privacy settings you should turn on in Windows and as a Windows User make sure you watch this video next give the video a quick thumbs up before you head out and I'll see you in that video Let's Go

Channel: Liron Segev

Views: 151,562

Keywords: liron segev, the techie guy, Microsoft account, local account, microsoft account vs loacl account, windows, microsoft, windows 10, windows 11, microsoft account, local account windows 11, windows 11 local account, how do i skip a microsoft account, remove microsoft account, windows setup

Id: oAs6Ae80vBg

Length: 9min 35sec (575 seconds)

Published: Sat Mar 16 2024