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

Anonymous
2022-06-29T22:51:13+00:00

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.

Windows for home | Windows 10 | Security and privacy

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  1. Anonymous
    2022-10-17T21:17:51+00:00

    Where I am working at currently has the exact same issue. Literally everyone has been auto-enrolled with BitLocker without the permission or knowledge. We found out when I had to do some upgrades on one computer and after I was done it asked for the recovery key. I have check the microsoft account do see the device in the account but without a Bitlocker recovery key. I checked Azure and found the device under the user but again no BitLocker recover key. EVERYONE DOES NOT HAVE A RECOVERY KEY. I HAD TO DECRYPT AND RECRYPT MY HARD DRIVE JUST TO GET ONE!!!

    This RANSOMWARE without a ransom. Support is non-existent, telling me to go through third parties to recover the key.

    So Microsoft please let me know what you are intending to do about this?

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  2. Anonymous
    2022-10-15T05:53:33+00:00

    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*

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  3. Anonymous
    2022-09-20T14:15:31+00:00

    I am so sorry. I’m really out of ideas for your case as well. Did you set your computer up yourself or did someone else do the original install/setup. The only thing I can think of is that the bitlocker recovery key for your device is under someone else’s ms account

    Rick

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  4. Anonymous
    2022-09-20T07:21:31+00:00

    Thank you for your reply.

    I was able to log on my Microsoft account in my phone but the recovery key is not there.

    I really don’t know what to do I have emailed Microsoft and asked where I can complain to as am gutted about this! It’s so frustrating!

    Janet

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  5. Anonymous
    2022-09-19T14:16:07+00:00

    I replied once before with the fix that I was able to come up with., but I'm not seeing it in this thread. If your computer is a personal computer and not part of a a corporate network, you are usually requested to give a user name and a password to Microsoft when you activate. In my case, My Mother in Law and Father in Law both have personal computers only. When they activated, they used their standard email account as the user name. Neither could remember the password they used and the PWs they have written down did not work. I had to set up there email on another computer and use the forgot my password option on the microsoft account login. I had to have access to their phones as well, because there is two factor ID. Once the password was recovered, I was able to login to their respective Microsoft Accounts and recover the bitlocker recovery key.

    While it is true that a clean install would have restored the computers, there would be no way to recover the pictures, documents and other stuff they had stored on those machines. There were some backups that I had done and I had taught them how to run backups, but their practice of backing up was spotty. Can't blame them, they are in their late 80's. I have a major problem with Microsoft pushing out encryption hidden in an update. Encryption may be useful to most people, but those people should be making that decision, not some all powerful software company. If I thought I had the time and patience left, Id move them both onto Apple machines, but that would be starting over. Best I can do now is make sure their computers do not allow automatic updates.....

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