Microsoft locks account; Looking for alternatives

[OneZeroByte]

Hello together,

 

Brief history

Since early November 2020, my Microsoft account (OneDrive, license keys, OneNote, etc.) has been suspended for no specific reason. I do not feel bad and MS does not help me. I have already contacted support 19 times (via phone (1€ per call) and chat). There they said each time that there is only one department that can unlock my account again - the compliance team. The support department itself has no possibility to view or change the account.

To contact the Compliance Team, there is exactly one (!) form. I have filled out this form several times. Here I only got the answer that my account is no longer available; however, this is not possible, since I still have an active Office license (shared, I do not have access) until the end of May and my e-mail is still assigned.

I even wrote to the data protection officer of MS and requested my data. Here I also only got the answer that this is not possible (but here in Germany the DSGVO is valid...).

Otherwise, I have called the very unfriendly headquarters of MS Germany several times. Microsoft actively prevents other communication channels.

 

Question #1

Are there already similar cases here? How would you approach the issue? Are there any users here who work at MS who could tell me more?

 

Question #2

As a follow-up, I looked up how the various tech giants with online storage respond to lockouts: I found hardly any case where the company responded (Apple seems fine, but is not an option for me). Even for Google Drive, they say they won't help in such a case.

My idea: free and redundant storage is not possible anywhere. So I want to continue to have my data with the big tech giants. The idea: I basically want to have my own Nextcloud instance. However, the data should not be on my server, but directly and encrypted on OneDrive, Google Drive, Dropbox, etc. Perhaps this can still be described as a special RAID configuration - just not with hard drives, but with cloud providers.

Is there (self-hosted at best) a provider that can do just that?

 

Thanks already for the help

OneZeroByte

[Mnky313]

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Are there already similar cases here? How would you approach the issue?

I haven't had any problems with Microsoft but I have had a similar thing happen to my Mojang (Minecraft) Account.

About a year or so ago (maybe longer now, I don't remember) I had this issue where every time I logged in it would fail and send me an email saying 'there was a security issue with your account' and force me to reset the password, after dealing with this for like 2 months they eventually stopped sending password reset emails and I've contacted support multiple times and haven't gotten any response. 

If  the account was more important I would probably call them but as it is it's not a huge deal as I only play single player and on servers I host (which can be set to offline (no auth) mode).

Quote

My idea: free and redundant storage is not possible anywhere.

Yeah, I gave up on cloud storage services a while ago, usually I just use Google Drive to provide download links to people. Any of my data or stuff sent between friends is on my NAS. Depending on how much data you're storing a small 4 drive NAS set up is RAID 5 or 10 could work, I believe there are some that can be accessed from anywhere with minimal setup.

Quote

However, the data should not be on my server, but directly and encrypted on OneDrive, Google Drive, Dropbox, etc. Perhaps this can still be described as a special RAID configuration - just not with hard drives, but with cloud providers.

Is there (self-hosted at best) a provider that can do just that?

I mean Mega encrypts all the stuff you upload to it, as for syncing across multiple providers I believe there are apps/extensions that can keep data synced between Google Drive and OneDrive. No idea if it's possible with Mega though.

[OneZeroByte]

1 hour ago, Mnky313 said:

Any of my data or stuff sent between friends is on my NAS.

That would be the best solution, of course, but the purchase price is quite high for me as a student .

 

56 minutes ago, Mnky313 said:

I mean Mega encrypts all the stuff you upload to it

Yes, but Microsoft also promises encryption. However, I can't believe that: There must have been some reason that the system/AI/employee/whatever classified me as suspicious.

By the way: Recently my parents had problems with their iCloud. Even in a company with such a high privacy policy, it was possible for the developers to look into the account after a verbal agreement to the superior department of the support.

[Mnky313]

5 hours ago, OneZeroByte said:

Yes, but Microsoft also promises encryption. However, I can't believe that: There must have been some reason that the system/AI/employee/whatever classified me as suspicious.

By the way: Recently my parents had problems with their iCloud. Even in a company with such a high privacy policy, it was possible for the developers to look into the account after a verbal agreement to the superior department of the support.

Where does Microsoft say OneDrive is encrypted? I would assume it is on the 'How OneDrive safeguards your data in the cloud' page but it's conveniently missing.

I really wouldn't trust any company saying they don't have access to your data that's stored on their services, however Mega was built on the idea of making it impossible for them to know what's being stored (so they can't be legally viable for what's on their services) so if I had to trust someone it would probably be them.

5 hours ago, OneZeroByte said:

That would be the best solution, of course, but the purchase price is quite high for me as a student .

How much data are you storing? It looks like you can get 1TB drives for ~€45 and 6TB drives for ~€95 on Amazon (at least from my quick searching, I don't speak German, could storage is expensive once you go anywhere near 1TB let alone 5.