> "To avoid the next problem: 'Microsoft locked my data behind bitlocker, and now I can't get it back.' they need to store that key on the MS account."

Doesn't that make the account requirement even more scary? So now if MS decides for some reason to lock my account, this will make even the data I have on my local disks inaccessible as well?

I don’t see what the problem is. Just don’t get into any business that MS considers shady, or disparage the company publicly, or piss off an executive, or get sanctioned because your work with the UN is at cross purposes with the current US administration.

You can save your recovery key in different formats (printed, on a USB stick, etc). The online recovery is just automatic.

Very much so.

And it's even more scary that MS uses dark patterns to trick older non-technical users into enabling MS online accounts. When the bitlocker activation automatically happens during tricking the user into going from a local account to online account it is without the user's consent or real participation. They don't print out a copy of the key or move it to a usb drive becuase they aren't aware their drives are being encrypted. And afterwards they can't set up recovery keys because the computer itself only shows the blue aka.ms screen. It's effectively dead until they follow the demands.

This is not theoretical, it actually happened to my mother on the local account Win 11 computer I set up for her sewing applications. I had to drive across town in order to figure it out since the weird URL I'd never heard of (aka.ms) and demand for pasting private info sounded so much like ransomware. And in fact, it was effectively ransomware, it was just demanding online activity rather than money.

OH no worries bitlocker had a backdoor for the NSA so it's actually possible to use that to recover the data.

https://cybernews.com/security/researcher-releases-bitlocker...

>Doesn't that make the account requirement even more scary? So now if MS decides for some reason to lock my account, this will make even the data I have on my local disks inaccessible as well?

Depends. The average user would be more afraid if its not backed up online.

It does seem a lot like ransomware.

Microsoft offers it, but they don't need to store it. I store my bitlocker keys locally. (Printed out in a safe).

Regardless of account type, there are many things that could require you to need those Bitlocker keys to get your data. Don't just associate them with an account, have Windows save the keys to a text file, and save that text file somewhere external, on a NAS or Dropbox or email itnto yourself or whatever, and print out 2 or 3 hard copies and keep them close by. I'm 1000x more worried about losing my data to a Windows crash/error than to theft or any other external actor.

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