Yet another 'you can't trust cloud services with your data' example, Microsoft edition.

Here’s one more near-perfect example of the whole ‘if you don’t store no-DRM versions of all the digital artefacts that you care about on a disk that you 100% control then you’re at risk’ theme that I wish would be made more clear to more people. Digital sovereignty is not just for nation-states!

Anyway, a hacker got into Joshua Khane’s Microsoft account. Well, tried to. Luckily Microsoft flagged it as suspicious.

Unluckily that meant that they disabled Khane’s account entirely so even he couldn’t access it any more.

How much of a problem was this ? Well, he was a fairly engaged Xbox and OneDrive user so:

The automated suspension locked him out of everything - Xbox profile, a quarter-century of purchased games, and OneDrive files including baby photos of his son.

One can’t blame anyone who uses Windows for being a OneDrive user of course now that Microsoft virtually force you to be.

When he contacted them, Microsoft said sorry but that’s life, we can’t help:

Microsoft’s initial response: irreversible. No exceptions. Standard support offered no path back.

And that’s of course where the story ends for the vast majority of people who find themselves in situations like this.

Thankfully for Joshua it turns out that 1) Microsoft are liars, it wasn’t at all irreversible and 2) he knows how to craft a social media post that can go viral.

The official Xbox account responded, apologized, and eventually reinstated everything - purchases and data intact. The turnaround from “irreversible” to “restored” happened only after viral visibility forced Microsoft’s hand.

There are multiple lessons we can all take away from this. But maybe the most obvious and most important one is as above. Do not store the only copy of anything you care about on someone else’s computer and/or locked away behind an account you don’t have full control over. And if your content is riddled with DRM, well, even if you have a copy of it saved, it’s probably not going work.

Backup all the things. If you can’t afford more disk space - it’s very expensive right now - then even backing up to several different cloud services is a lot better than relying on one. And buy DRM-free where you can.