Is Your Windows Machine Really Yours?

If you use Windows, the answer is increasingly “no.”

By Albert Fox Cahn & Jackie Singh

This article was first published at the Surveillance Technology Oversight Project, a New York-based civil rights and privacy group.

Is your computer truly yours? If you use Windows, the answer is increasingly “no”.

This isn’t yet another warning about cybercriminals; it’s a threat from the very company you rely on to keep your computer safe: Microsoft. That’s because a series of changes have made it increasingly impossible to use your device on your own terms, something that will have implications for how we think about personal computers for years.

The most recent change from Microsoft was the quiet announcement that they would no longer let users create local accounts on new PCs. You may have never heard of a ‘local account’ before, but it’s almost certain that you’ve used one. This is because, for most of computing history, they were the only type of account we had. With a local account, you create a username and password that are set up and saved only…