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[martinuzz]

A friend just got 3 emails from Microsoft with purchase details, for 3 Microsoft gift cards.
Except he didn't buy any.

What happened, his Microsoft account was hacked, hackers turned on the 'automatic incasso' option for Paypal, and that's all they need to plunder your bank account, if you have Paypal linked to it.

He has his money back. Paypal told him that there are many many Microsoft account hacks going on right now, and returned his money pretty fast.

So people, keep an eye on your mail for Microsoft purchases, and to be safe, unlink Paypal from your bank account.


EDIT: for fun and giggles, log into your Microsoft accounts and look at the log-in logs. Days and days of login attempts. Looks like they are trying to brute force passwords, and apparently succeeding.

[nenjin]

Can't wait for Windows 10 to be end of life and we all need an MS account to use Win11!

[Frumple]

Yeah, if win 11 ends up forcing you into a MS account just to run it, that'd probably finally be enough to drive me to linux.

[nenjin]

"Windows 11 Home requires you to sign in with a Microsoft account during initial setup. Beginning with version 22H2, so does Windows 11 Pro when you choose the option to set it up for personal use. You can work around this restriction by entering the address no@thankyou.com as your Microsoft account. When you're asked for a password, enter anything. Windows will inform you that the account has been locked because of too many incorrect password attempts (you're not the first person to do this, after all), and you'll be given the option to create a local account instead."

[anewaname]

There is another option that I've used with 10 and 11, that allows you to set up your Windows user account before you connect to the internet, and there is no later requirement to sign into a Microsoft account.

[Robsoie]

Switching to linux has always been a question i asked myself , did it around 2018 for an old dead laptop :

I had a very very old low end laptop that was running window XP until a point in which for some reason it was just crawling and it's been years i hadn't used it.
At some point instead of letting it continue to rot, i looked into trying to revive it , not by going to just format/reinstall XP but instead use this opportuninty to try those "you should get a linux distro to revive that old piece hardware, here's a user friendly linux distro : " articles and forum threads.

After a lot of reading and googling, i went with Linux Mint

It was version 13 that was the most recommended for reviving very low end systems, i went with "Linux Mint 13 xfce" instead of the mate or cinnamon variant because it was supposed to be the lightest/fastest in term of ressources of the linux mint , and that old low end laptop sure could have used the lighter on ressource version of that new OS.

Things went surprisingly well while following tutorials.

In term of usability it felt easy enough to do just basic things, programs could be found on a software manager thing .

But then it went much more complicated when wanting to get things that weren't found in the manager, as you needed to then start to run around with those sudo thingy line of codes, and more than often type your name and password for nearly every actions (so in case you had not it in mind and you went with some complicated name/password, make sure to get those on a "postit" )

for some application it was much worse with "dependancies" that sometime required you to hunt for them as they weren't found in the location you were pointed to from reading the support board anymore, but had moved somewhere else.

And that is before reaching the point " i had those very good and useful programs/games/whatever on my old XP, let's see how i can run them in mint ?" , instead of having to use an often less good "libre" alternative (when one existed and was actually compatible with this version 13 as by then mint moved to 17 ) , or hoping things could be installed and run through wine (tested on an old game and it worked surprisingly well) .

The best sure-thing was to go the virtual box way after finding wich version was compatible ( https://www.virtualbox.org/wiki/Linux_Downloads ) , load an XP iso and install it inside and then install and use programs from there , worked for a couple of old applications but i imagine for anything that require some more amount of ressource, you will have to get a good system to keep running all those well through virtual box

So for just browsing the internet or using basic application from the software manager, there was no problem.
But for doing much, you quickly left the "user friendly" zone completely.

Now that was ages ago, i assume there are much more user friendly distro available now, and if it's to move out of window 10 you will not have to limit so much the choice of distro or their versions as you system would certainly be able to take them all, and there are much much more window programs than comes with a linux version now (and some "libre" alternative are sometime quite great now).

I've been eyeing a bit on " ZorinOS " that seems to be the most recommended nowaday to user coming out of Window and want to get something more user friendy than the usual linux distro, when will come the time to ask myself what to do once window 10 will cease to be supported by security updates.
https://zorin.com/os/

ZorinOS comes in free and pro version, the pro version is to be purchased and comes with tons of pre-installed softwares and is a way to support financially the devs as the free version has no limitation.

[Flying Dice]

Yeah, if win 11 ends up forcing you into a MS account just to run it, that'd probably finally be enough to drive me to linux.

Joke's on them, they said that my PC can't support Win11 and refused to even give me the option to """upgrade""".

[nenjin]

That's because your motherboard lacks the requisite Trusted Module Platform tech, which is the standard Microsoft is setting for Windows 11. Basically allows you to encrypt things at the firmware level, since firmware hacks are getting more common. Unfortunately that level of tech also allows the implementation of remote kill switches. So it's basically both a security thing and a DRM thing.

[Flying Dice]

The real meme is that as almost as soon as the hard requirement was announced M$ also made it clear that they were making a China/Russia exception clause.

[Starver]

Meant to come back here, earlier, to mention that I'm still getting used to keeping a (original installation) Win11 machine running nicely[1][3][4][5][6].

Set up a machine-specific (essentially throwaway) mail address that has been used in anger just once since setup (an incidental registration that was equally throwaway and only evergoing to be applying to this exact laptop), which was the last time we bothered checking the email for.

Then started to get tray notifications about "There is a problem with your account, click here to rectify", which just opens a(n apparently unrelated) page of the System interface.

As the account has no links to anything else (well, that one registration, but that's definitely not involved,; certainly not got Paypal/payments-thing linked or any other 'useful' hackable entity) we're just letting it go unanswered now. Having disabled most of other vender-suite "maybe you'd like to add <this app>" notifications, it's now just this, every time a screenshot is accidentally taken (the key to initiate that is right next to another couple of frequently used keys), the fact that Microsoft Defender hasn't found any problems (neither has the full AV we have installed), occasional disk-space warnings (see ^[3], below) and the odd announcement that an Update needs the machine to restart 'when not in use' (which tends to be when it is in use, just unwatched, so it's vital that the user keeps track of what work they have open when they turn their back on it for a while).


So, with the thread's message of what may be a matter of building up brute-force login attempts, I tried to check to see if we've been subject to those. But it's hard to tell. Either we've had no activity, or I'm not connecting to the throwaway account we used almost a year ago. But the machine's still working (after its fashion). It does some things better than its XP/Vista/etc bretheren, but we're still not on top of everything it seems to be doing (having skipped Win10 and had precious little wish to explore Win8(.1)'s environment outside of necessity).


And this reinforces my own general policy of not re-using one 'master login' behind all my online activities. Or even "same username, same password, different services". Yes, I've probably lost/forgotten more logins than I probably have wanted to, but no one insecure point of failure where I've lost access (or lost control of) everything in one fell swoop. (Also, my determination not to be just 'one handy click away' from buying Premium Apps/Upgrades.


Ok, this was just me belatedly commenting how the warning had me checking a related system, andto convey  how Win11 does not necessarily require a full surrender of identity (there may be a PAYG phone number submitted somewhere for reverification purposes, should they be needed!), aside from the "nothanks" trick itself, but has rather expanded out to venting on several (only marginally related) issues now that my mind is turned back to the whole set of circumstances again. Ignore all the bits that don't apply. (All of them?)


[1] Oh, it's nice that if you close Notepad, it basically autorecovers what files (or unsaved jottings) you had open, but it goes against the grain to have to specifically not File|Quit (only File|Close), due to that closing every Notepad window (which necessitates hope that it'll auto-open them all again[2]). And that's when every Notepad (or File Manager, or Command Prompt, ...) doesn't spontaneously vanish for no apparent reason (yet another reason for taking joy in the autorecovering! ...though of course neither explorer or cmd has that easy facility).

[2] Including the one you just wanted to close, and possibly others you had closed. But occasionally none of them. Until the next time you open Notepad anew, when it opens them, plus the (re-)opened instances from the interim, necessitating lengthy 'version checking' of 'unsaved change' text files to work out which to close down and which to continue with... How could they have made Notepad so awkward to use, probably the simplest commonly used application they provide 'as is', and have done since the '80s..?

[3] Also notable, the remaining disk space can jump up and down by tens of gigabytes for no apparent reason. Whilst machine is offline (so not a Windows Update download, 'in waiting'). And without obvious hard use that should use memory, but my best bet is still Swapfile-shuffling of some kind.

[4] What dev at MS decided that minimising a window should no longer put it to the end of the Alt-Tab list? If it stays at the top, then it might as well not have been backgrounded. On this machine, unlike all others we use, picking up the last-tabs (Alt-Shift-Tab, for starters) has to be the way to check successive windows of a given type.

[5] This might be just a bluetooth issue, but connecting bluetooth earphones doesn't always connect enough to actually get audio out. The 'simplest' way to reconnect them is to remove them from the device list then reinstall them (both connected and selectable as audio-out). Just connecting to them leaves them off the valid Sound ports to choose from. Luckily, not a major use for this machine, and there's always the ability to have phono-headphones plugged in, in most cases.

[6] More the laptop manufacturer's fault, but it took ages to work out that Shift-Fn-S toggled the ShiftLock status (that key not existing on the physical keyboard). But at least now we don't have to open up the OSK to then mouse click and untoggle it when spreadsheets start to only scroll, in cursoring, rather than move the cell focus. But it's not written anywhere in the hardware documentation, even after I knew what to look for. For ages, we thought it was an application bug.

[Frumple]

How could they have made Notepad so awkward to use, probably the simplest commonly used application they provide 'as is', and have done since the '80s..?

There be a reason notepad++ exists, heh. Notepad's had issues since, like... the 90s? Early 00s? There being awkward bits to its functioning predates Win10/11 by decades. It is the least bloated/troublesome text editor windows comes with, but that's only saying so much.

Incidentally, y'know. N++ is love, N++ is life.

[Starver]

How could they have made Notepad so awkward to use, probably the simplest commonly used application they provide 'as is', and have done since the '80s..?

There be a reason notepad++ exists, heh. Notepad's had issues since, like... the 90s? Early 00s? There being awkward bits to its functioning predates Win10/11 by decades. It is the least bloated/troublesome text editor windows comes with, but that's only saying so much.

Incidentally, y'know. N++ is love, N++ is life.

Oh, I know there's that, but... (original) Notepad just works. Nothing fancy. If you want fancy things (regexp replacements, ability to specify newlines in searches, etc) then obviously you go the extra mile. As far as I can see, Win11 (and possibly Win10/Win8.x, maybe even earlier, really didn't have to find that out) Notepad has been the opposite of 'reskinned'. Same basic skin, but with back-end changes that... well, mixed bag, as I mentioned. It's now a single Notepad process (or process-tree, maybe, from a root coordinating App) that maintains all its 'copies' (whether as tabs, which I already nixed as default behaviour, or as the traditionally seperate windows which just works better for placing side-to-side[1]).

Ok, one more bonus feature for 'new Notepad'. If you select something and do a Ctrl-F or Ctrl-H, it auto-fills the searching box with what you have highlit. If you want to globally replace something (potentially complex) with something else (also potentially complex), you no longer need to select/copy the findable, Ctrl-F, paste the findable, thank it for doing so, close, select-copy the replacable, Ctrl-H and paste the replacable in the second bit. Now you can just copy the replacable (from elsewhere, in our case) highlight the first visible instance of the findable, Ctrl-H, the 'find' part is filled in and you can tab and paste into the 'replace' the replacing bit. Slightly more streamlined than before...

But this really now has nothing to at all to do with the MS hack, now. Sorry to divert.

(But, also, everyone also knows to beware of mails/popups etc that *claim* that your accounts are hacked and invite you to log into them (by <this handy link.hacked.blogpress.ru/Phishing-Page/submit.php>) in order to check for suspicious activity, or to 'change your password to prevent it'. Everyone here probably knows this, I trust, but just to mention it for the benefit of any future reader who passes by who has quite legitimately managed to avoid knowing that it's necessary to be ware of this kind of thing and ideally do your own legwork if you want to go and check the situation with your various online providers when you suspect shenanigans.)



[1] Oh, there's that, too. So easy on the laptop to hit the key-combo that tries to tile the current maximised window with another window, because the Fn (for laptop key-extensions) is right next to the Windows Key and instead of something like Ctrl-Fn-Left to get "Ctrl-Home" functionality it suddenly demaximises and left-half tiles the current window and invites you to select what's on the right side. So easy to catch it wrong. And if you cancel it, the window doesn't go back to maximised but is Restored to the default middle-of-the-screen-non-fullscreen layout, so it needs Alt-Space-X-ing back to Maximised. So annoying to me, so confusing to the actual frequent user of the laptop for whom none of this happens on any of the older machines they use.

[Magmacube_tr]

Argh! Me microsoft account got plunder'd by a bunch of digital landlubbers!