Bitlocker enabled itself on Windows 10 Home edition without a notice and without permission

This happened to me. A recently purchased laptop had a black screen, and BestBuy tried to transfer data from the hard drive to a brand new laptop. That's when I found out BitLocker was turned on. I did not switch it to On, and the Recovery Key was not in my MS account.

When I checked the brand new laptop, the Privacy & Security / Device Encryption screen has Device Encryption defaulted to On.

When I loaded MS365 on the brand new laptop, I was NOT notified that the default is ON, nor was I notified to save the Recovery Key.

MS really needs to get it together. If a user is unable to log on for whatever reason (BIOS issue for example), the user's data is inaccessible. MS doesn't even mention BitLocker during the MS365 installation process. Users are left to discover too late that they don't have a Recovery Key.

I too have had this problem and when I tried to talk to support they didn’t really know what to do. In the end they said I needed a clean reinstall. Is there any other way as I don’t want to lose my stuff. Also I don’t know if it’s just coincidence but Microsoft updated my service agreement in the 15th of this month and it hasn’t worked since? Any help would be appreciated.

Thanks

I was lucky. It took some wrangling around, but at least I was able to find the correct bit locker keys for each computer. I cannot imaging the grief I would be dealing with if my In-Laws had lost 80 some odd years worth of pictures and videos that they paid good money to have digitized. Chances are3, I have them backed up somewhere, but finding all that would have been a major task.

I find it odd that Microsoft has offered no explanation or apology for this blatant and egregious error. It's almost like they are saying "we are Microsoft, you don't like it? tough."

Interesting, because today I found out that my C drive is also encrypted with BitLocker although I have Home edition. Plus, my mom texted me today because she was greeted with BitLocker's blue screen (she also has Home edition and never applied BitLocker herself). Either it's a bug or we were hacked. *shrugs*

After three years of owning a Dell Inspiron 13 (Windows Home) the computer somehow enabled Bitlocker on its own and encrypted my C: drive. Since I did not activate Bitlocker, I don't have the keys to decrypt the drive. My Microsoft account does not list any keys in it so there is no way to recover the keys as far as I know. Therefore none of the published solutions I have seen can work because they all assume that I have access to the keys. I see many similar complaints online (at least since 2018) and hundreds of "likes" so this appears to be a relatively common problem.

When booting, I see a message titled "BitLocker recovery" and it asks for the recovery key. It then says to "try your work or school account at: aka.ms/aadrecoverykey."

This suggests that the key may be associated with some active directory domain away from my computer. However, the admin account on this computer has, to my knowledge, never logged into an active directory domain, although non-admin users have. And, if the Amin account has connected to a Active Directory somewhere, I sure as heck did not give them a permission to encrypt my drive and lock me out of my computer, and give the key to some third party "work or school" account. If this is what happened, Microsoft, you have a serious security issue where third parties can effectively encrypt hard drives without permission using Microsoft's own tools. That is ransomware - without the ransom. But, this is still just a theory vaguely supported by this link https://hardsoft-support.kayako.com/article/99-windows-10-bitlocker-turns-on-without-a-notice

Here is a quote from the post: "Dell and Lenovo systems that ship with the Windows 10 operating system and are equipped with Trusted Platform Module (TPM) capability will have Microsoft BitLocker encryption enabled from the factory. It has been found that once the device is registered to a Active Directory domain - Office 365 Azure AD, Windows 10 automatically encrypts the system drive. You find this once you reboot your computer and are then prompted for the BitLocker key."

Since I don't know what possible organization could have encrypted the drive, and since I don't have admin access to them, the instructions in the article don't apply.

The laptop is Dell Inspiron 13 7370 - which I don't even think has a TPM chip built in it. BIOS is version 1.20.0. ePSA build is 4306.13 UEFI ROM.

So, Microsoft, how does this get fixed?

P.S. My other computers have Win10 Pro and and they have Bitlocker turned on, but this computer intentionally did not have Bitlocker turned on - and it was not supposed to be possible to turn on bitlocker on a Win10 Home edition. I am mentioning this to highlight that I did not "accidentally" trigger the Bitlocker being turned on - especially because it requires many steps and confirmations. The drive was simply encrypted one day with permission from me.

hello K G2 so i think do you have an administrator which controls that Laptop and admin enabled Bitlocker without Admin calling you to give the code if you want to open the C: drive sincerely Windows_XP_2001