A Reddit user "deus03690" has shared his unfortunate experience of how an unexpected suspension of their Microsoft account resulted in the permanent loss of over 30 years’ worth of personal and professional data. The incident occurred during a routine file migration between storage drives, during which the user temporarily uploaded files - including unique photos, documents, videos, and texts dating back to the 1990s - to OneDrive.
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According to the post, access to the account was abruptly revoked shortly after the upload, with no prior notification or explanation provided by Microsoft. Upon attempting to log in, the user faced access restrictions. Despite submitting a compliance form 18 times, the user received only automated responses about a terms of use violation and was unable to reach a human support representative.
deus03690 described the situation as "digital hostage-taking,". They, expressed deep frustration, stating that Microsoft suspended their account shortly after they uploaded 30 years’ worth of irreplaceable photos and work to OneDrive. They were in the process of consolidating data from multiple old drives ahead of a major move - drives that had to be discarded due to space limitations. The intention as simple as follows: Use OneDrive as a temporary bridge before transferring everything to a new drive.
Other Reddit users speculated that the block may have been triggered by automated systems detecting content that potentially violated Microsoft’s policies, such as copyright infringement or breaches of community guidelines. However, the user has not been able to find what exact data caused the situation.
On the Reddit thread, the user jdsquint as mentioned a 3-2-1 backup rule: maintaining three copies of data across two different media types, with one copy stored off-site. Relying solely on a cloud service - particularly without local backups - poses significant risk in the event of account termination or access restrictions. He also stated that since the files were so important and valuable, it was not worth trusting their storage only to the cloud.
The situation clearly shows that Microsoft's modern policy that makes the Microsoft account sign-ins mandatory for Windows 11 installation can be very unsafe. A deletion of a Microsoft account can result in irreversible data loss, particularly for devices using encryption tied to the account.
Microsoft didn't comment this specific case. The affected user asked other community members for advice on how to escalate the case legally or publicly to make the company respond.
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This shows why we can’t completely trust third-party cloud services with our files. As soon as the cloud provider pulls the plug, your data is gone.
By all means, use OneDrive for its advantages, but this reddit user really should have also invested in an external hard drive and made a second backup there. Putting everything onto OneDrive (and discarding the old drives) means a single point of failure.