A Microsoft 365 user lost 30 years of data — and the company isn't doing anything to help

It's no secret that Microsoft recommends Windows 11 users to use a Microsoft Account instead of local accounts to log in to PCs. Not only that, but the software giant has even gone so far as to force people to use its online account instead of the local one on PCs. While there are plenty of benefits to using a Microsoft account instead of a local account, especially if you're subscribed to Microsoft 365, you might need to think twice before using it as your primary source of cloud data storage.

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A Microsoft 365 subscription provides 1 TB of cloud storage per person if you buy the Family tier, so if you use that same Microsoft account to log in to your PC, you can free up some space from your physical drive and quickly store your data in OneDrive. However, a Microsoft 365 user recently raised some serious doubts over whether we should solely rely on it for storing all our important files.

Microsoft is under fire after erasing decades of user data with no warning

A Reddit user, u/deus03690, shared frustration on r/microsoft365 that Microsoft locked their account, leading to a loss of "30 years' worth of irreplaceable photos and work." The user claimed to have submitted the compliance form 18 times to recover their account, but Microsoft didn't help other than sending an automated response, forcing them to contemplate legal options to recover their lost data.

The events that led to Microsoft blocking the user's account are even more concerning. The user migrated the data from their old physical drives and uploaded it to OneDrive for transferring to a new drive later. However, before they could move those files, Microsoft randomly suspended their account without "warning, reason, or any legitimate recourse," as stated by the user.

According to Microsoft's terms and conditions, the company holds the right to close your account if you don't log in to Outlook.com and OneDrive separately at least once a year. There are other noteworthy terms and conditions that you need to follow to continue using a Microsoft Account. You can read about all of those details on Microsoft's Services Agreement page. While it's a long document, the user didn't share their thoughts on whether they suspected any specific action other than uploading that data to OneDrive might have led to the suspension.

Should you keep using OneDrive?

Since Microsoft has yet to clarify what led to the incident or who's at fault, it's impossible to pick a side. That said, OneDrive is still considered one of the best cloud storage solutions, but incidents like these do raise some serious questions about how safe your data is on Microsoft's cloud platform. If it bothers you, you should back up all your important data to another cloud provider to keep yourself safe from situations like this.