Many people will have access to a secondary device, not all of course.
Comment on Microsoft is enabling BitLocker device encryption by default on Windows 11
catloaf@lemm.ee 5 weeks agoHow do you get to your Microsoft account when your computer is locked?
T00l_shed@lemmy.world 5 weeks ago
halcyoncmdr@lemmy.world 5 weeks ago
Almost everyone has access to a phone. Most governments, including the US provide free or low cost smartphones to those who can’t afford it. There are entire MVNO carriers based around this, like Assurance wireless.
lud@lemm.ee 5 weeks ago
A phone or another computer?
AnyOldName3@lemmy.world 5 weeks ago
If you’re doing things properly, you’ll know your Microsoft account password or have it in a password manager (and maybe have other account recovery options available like getting a password reset email etc.), and have a separate password for the PC you’re locked out of, which would be the thing you’d forgotten. If someone isn’t computer-literate, it’s totally plausible that they’d forget both passwords, have no password manager, and not have set up a recovery email address, and they’d lose all their data if they couldn’t get into their machine.
catloaf@lemm.ee 5 weeks ago
Even if you have your Microsoft account password, it doesn’t help when you can’t even boot into Windows.
9point6@lemmy.world 5 weeks ago
Most people have smartphones these days where they would be able to log into their account and recover the key if it’s backed up.
Bear in mind that non-techy users don’t get the option to opt out of a Microsoft account in the OOBE now, so most should have their key backed up without thinking about it
catloaf@lemm.ee 5 weeks ago
Do they also know their password? Hopefully they didn’t save it on the PC that is now locked (a lot of them probably did, if they saved it at all).