According to Microsoft's documentation, a user can only change the setting to enable or disable the new People section three times a year.

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[–] 10 points 1 year ago* (4 children)

Thank you for the tip. Disgusting how "features" like this are turned on by default.

If I wanted to encrypt everything I put on OneDrive, hopefully something that is crossplatform, how'd I do that? I'm on linux right now.

EDIT: A quick search brings up VeraCrypt a bunch of times and it's apparently FOSS, does anyone have experiences with it?

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  • [–] 4 points 1 year ago

    Veracrypt is intended for local file system encryption. Do not use it for cloud encryption. You will need to reupload the entire encrypted file that encapsulates all your encrypted files every time you make a change, which eats a lot of date/bandwidth as it increases in size. Source: https://www.cryfs.org/comparison#veracrypt

    You probably want something like cryfs or cryptomater, like the other commenter mentioned. gocryptfs might work if you do not care about Microsoft trying to guess the contents of your files based on their metadata/file size and how that changes over time. (See watermarking attacks for details)

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  • [–] 1 point 1 year ago

    I've used veracrypt for years, starting back on Windows and I still use it since I moved to Linux. I don't use all of the features for it but what I have are encrypted volumes that exist on hard disks as a single file, which when opened with veracrypt, show themselves as a new disk in the system.

    There's probably better ways to encrypt data on onedrive, but you could probably create one of those encrypted volumes to store on onedrive.

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  • 55 comments in c/technology@lemmy.world view that post
    [–] 95 points 1 year ago (15 children)

    three times a year.

    WTF is up with MS doing this rate limiting? I just learned that Win11 will lock you out of your own machine for 2 hours if you restart too many times, like if you have a dualboot and are doing something that requires restarts to resolve.

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  • [–] 33 points 1 year ago (4 children)

    What the shit? Ooh, I need to test this on my work computer!

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  • [–] 25 points 1 year ago (3 children)

    it's a very good feature. if you have too much work and need a longer break, just restart a few times. i may need to change my work laptop from macbook to a windows

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  • [–] 3 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (2 children)

    You have a work MacBook? Man, your company must be filthy stinkin' rich.

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  • [–] 26 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (7 children)

    This is why I decided to dual-boot Ubuntu and Win10 until I'm fully comfortable on Linux. Every single thing about Win11 just makes my skin crawl.

    Last week it was the news that they're eliminating methods to install the OS at all without being signed into a MS account. The degree of snooping had no plausible explanation other than for Microsoft to harvest and sell your data.

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  • [–] 5 points 1 year ago (5 children)

    As someone who was in your exact position several years ago, nice!

    I'd recommend Linux Mint to newcomers though. It's based on Ubuntu and is even easier to get comfortable with (much better GUI for updates and app "store"), but it strips out all the Microsoft-like stuff that Canonical have been doing in recent years.

    Pop!_OS (also based on Ubuntu) and Bazzite are also meant to be beginner friendly, and are particularly geared towards gaming on Linux, especially the latter.

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  • [–] 2 points 1 year ago

    I actually went with Tuxedo OS, which is based on the Ubuntu kernel but has a very noob-friendly desktop environment.

    My daily driver laptop is a 12-year-old Hackintosh MBP that I've been repairing for years, but I've priced out a Tuxedo laptop for when it finally kicks the bucket. So I started dual booting Tuxedo on that as well to get my bearings.

    Once I'm a little more experienced, I'm definitely interested to check out other distros! Right now it's a lot of looking up terminal commands and learning the architecture. The firmware fan control in the MacBook is shot - fans blasting at full speed due to a failed GPU temp sensor that makes the computer assume it's overheating - so I've already learned how to write to /sys/ with a custom fan control based on the working sensor in the CPU die.

    It's been really fun so far. You get the sense of just having vastly greater control over the hardware at a low level and the ability to control how it functions in a way that Windows and MacOS completely obfuscate. I still have very little idea what I'm doing in the terminal, but I'm starting to pick it up.

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  • [–] 1 point 1 year ago (3 children)

    I started with mint, but the more I see about Bazzite the more I wish I had started there. It just seems slightly more aligned to my needs.

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  • [–] 2 points 1 year ago (2 children)

    Great thing about Linux is you can change your distro whenever you want.

    If you're uncertain, or not ready to go through the process just yet, you can always just boot Bazzite off a USB drive and play around with it for now.

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  • [–] 1 point 1 year ago (1 child)

    Wouldn't that wipe my current data? Like, sure I can install Bazzite, but there's more setup to be done once again, and if I dislike it then I'm going through the setup once more. I understand it's not that hard all things considered, but it's not necessarily easy to just go mucking around with it with limited free time.

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  • [–] 2 points 1 year ago

    Oh yeah there's definitely a bit of effort involved, but most distros have very similar directory setups, so it's often just a matter of copying across the relevant folders, with the "home" folder being the one that typically contains most or all of your user data.

    Being able to test run distros off a USB drive is a great (and easy) way to see if it might be for you without making any sort of commitment.

    Another option is to install the distro to a second hard drive so you have a more permanent environment to test it. I've done this before, and when I was content that I wanted to switch to it I just copied all my stuff across.

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  • [–] 5 points 1 year ago (1 child)

    Preventing their shitty brute force protection from allowing someone to get a users MS account password because they are FORCING users to use a non-local account?

    The computer would have to store a hash locally to authenticate that account offline, so this is very likely why this is here. Because they've enabled a path to brute forcing their cloud accounts without their servers knowing.

    The windows shithole is just layers of bad design all the way down.

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  • [–] 54 points 1 year ago (5 children)

    If I hadn't abandoned OneDrive already, this would make me do so.

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  • [–] 14 points 1 year ago (4 children)

    Yeah but they are taking your data from the laptop your mum bought yesterday and put all the family vacation pictures on. Mum didn't know she had to kill off OneDrive or Microsoft will hoover up and monetise your memories.

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  • [–] 3 points 1 year ago (2 children)

    Fortunately not... I'm generally the one responsible for IT maintenance with my parents' as they get older. Disabled OneDrive long ago since they don't use it.

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  • [–] 7 points 1 year ago (1 child)

    No, you really, truly can’t “rugged individualism” your way out of a societal problem. Remember that wedding you went to a few months ago? Someone uploaded this photos and now your social graph has been recorded. When your friend’s kid had a birthday party a few weeks ago? You were uploaded and graphed again. When you were out at that restaurant and you were in the background of someone’s date selfie? Graphed again.

    The only solution to this problem is real data protection law, like the GDPR in the EU.

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  • [–] 1 point 1 year ago

    Oh, I definitely agree. We need better privacy and data protection laws here in Australia too. In the meantime, however, I do what I can to minimise my footprint. I'm well aware that other people are going to be the weak link!

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  • [–] 22 points 1 year ago (3 children)

    By mates, do they mean buddies or procreative partners?

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  • [–] 19 points 1 year ago (1 child)

    The fuck is that goddamn thumbnail. You keep shalehket out of this shit.

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  • [–] 16 points 1 year ago

    I think that’s why it’s recommended to encrypt files containing personal information with a separate tool before uploading them to any cloud service. It prevents big data from automatically processing your Information and protects you from leaks.

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  • [–] 13 points 1 year ago

    Jokes on them, I don't have any mates!

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  • [–] 11 points 1 year ago

    In Europe this probably goes against GDPR, right? If I don't agree, they should not collect my face

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  • [–] 10 points 1 year ago (10 children)

    Why are they using electricity for stuff no one asked for? It seems to be too cheap over there...

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  • [+] 0 points 1 year ago (8 children)
  • [–] 2 points 1 year ago (1 child)

    If you really want it, you should be able to enable it. No reason to do that with the other 90% who don't need it.

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  • [–] 4 points 1 year ago* (5 children)

    Only if it can be done locally. I don't want my fucking face going out to a bunch of asshole corporations databases any more than absolutely necessary. Shit like this is why I don't let people take my picture.

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  • [+] 0 points 1 year ago (5 children)
  • [–] 1 point 1 year ago (4 children)

    Do you not understand how cloud services work?

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  • [+] 0 points 1 year ago (4 children)
  • [–] 1 point 1 year ago (3 children)

    When you put your photos (or anything else) on onedrive they go to Microsoft's servers. Microsoft now has your photos. That is how this works. They aren't pushing so hard to coerce Windows users into using it for benevolent reasons.

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  • [+] 0 points 1 year ago* (3 children)
  • [–] 1 point 1 year ago (2 children)

    So you want it to be done locally against photos that are stored in the cloud?

    I don't want my photos in the cloud period.

    This only happens for photos that you upload to onedrive. Why or how would it happen “locally”?

    Have the software run on the PC or a server that you own.

    You said “a bunch of asshole corporations databases” - who are the “bunch of corporations”? Microsoft is only 1 corporation.

    Any corporation that lets you upload photos. Onedrive, google, facebook, whoever. They're all abusing your data.

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  • [+] 0 points 1 year ago (2 children)
  • [–] 1 point 1 year ago (1 child)

    why are you complaining about this feature that only exists does people who do?

    To wake others up to the fact that it's not a good service to use and to the fact that maybe the people in the pictures they are uploading also don't want to have their image handed over to all these corporations. Have you ever asked the people in your pictures about this? I don't even let anyone take my picture anymore because everyone and their grandma has been ignoring my wishes about that since fucking myspace.

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    [–] 18 points 1 year ago

    Ha, joke's on you Microsoft: I don't have any mates.

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  • [–] 4 points 1 year ago

    Give MS a bunch of fake mates. Fill their models with NOISE.

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  • [–] 3 points 1 year ago (1 child)

    So, will this look through porn videos as well? Asking for a friend.

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  • [–] 2 points 1 year ago

    Jokes on them, I have no friends.

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  • [–] 2 points 1 year ago

    Get a second drive, SD card, USB, ssd whatever and have it just for your back ups. If your back up drive fails, well, fuck

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  • [–] 2 points 1 year ago

    I'm done defending idiots. Use sh%t, get hit.

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  • [–] 1 point 1 year ago

    If you're stuck with Windows 11, this removes OneDrive nicely.

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  • [+] -3 points 1 year ago (5 children)
  • [–] 8 points 1 year ago (4 children)

    Why would anyone need to turn it on or off 3 times in a year?

    Why would they need to limit you?

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  • [+] -3 points 1 year ago (4 children)
  • [–] 4 points 1 year ago (2 children)

    Why do you need to know how other people use software to understand why arbitrary limits are arbitrary?

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  • [+] -1 points 1 year ago (2 children)
  • [–] 1 point 1 year ago (1 child)

    what reason would anyone have

    That's none of your business. You don't need to know why anyone wants to do a thing to advocate for their freedom to do it.

    Just because you lack the imagination to think of reasons someone might have, doesn't mean that they don't have a perfectly good reason. But, they shouldn't need to justify themselves to you.

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  • [+] -1 points 1 year ago* (1 child)
  • [–] 1 point 1 year ago*

    You don’t need to know why anyone wants to do a thing to advocate for their freedom to do it.

    You don't know why they might want to do this thing. I also don't know why they would want to do this thing. The difference is, I 👏 Don't 👏 Care 👏. My opinion of their reason to want to do it is irrelevant to my advocating their freedom to do it.

    And that's all I'm going to say on the subject. If you can't understand that basic fact, then I don't know what else I can say.

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  • 6 comments in c/privacy@lemmy.ml view that post
    [–] 18 points 1 year ago*

    However, it is that seemingly arbitrary three-times-a-year limit applied to the People section that is most concerning. Why not four? Why not as many times as a user wants?

    Possibly because deleting or recreating the data is resource-intensive on the servers. It might actually be a good sign that Microsoft really removes the data, not just mark it inactive, when you turn the feature off.

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  • [–] 4 points 1 year ago

    Fuck Microsoft. I'm not using OneDrive.

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  • [–] 4 points 1 year ago (1 child)

    It's 3 because

    On Off On

    Now wait 1 year

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  • "Microsoft OneDrive is rolling out AI face recognition for your photos." To disable (for now), go to Privacy & Permissions → People section. (if you are in EU, maybe it is deactivated by default) source: https://x.com/ProtonDrive/status/1978109833690665463

    #microsoft #onedrive #privacy #ai

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  • [–] 3 points 1 year ago

    Oh man am I gonna double down on deleting my MS stuff. Gj guys!

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  • 4 comments in c/technology@beehaw.org view that post
    [–] 12 points 11 months ago

    If you're tech-savvy enough for it, please consider setting up an Immich library for your photos. That way, they won't ever need to leave your home while still providing surprisingly powerful face recognition and photo search by context.

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  • [–] 7 points 11 months ago

    2026 2 times a year

    2027 1 time a year

    2028 uh where is the toggle?

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  • [–] 3 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (1 child)

    IMO, it's already insane to upload private pictures there without encrypting them first.

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  • [–] 4 points 11 months ago

    Better if they don't leave your device in the first place, encryption should always be considered a last line of defence, just because some encryption is unbreakable today, it may be easily broken in the future as breakthroughs in computers and mathematics advance.

    Instead of paying for cloud backups just buy some hard drives, it's cheaper in the long run too.

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