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
    2023-10-04T23:30:51+00:00

    i know all about it, and this will make data recovery service i do a knightmare. if it move full to the home market, witch i can see it doing so, with windows 11 starting to lock everyting down, will be good in the long run for some reasons, "everying happens for a reason" to quote.

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  2. Anonymous
    2023-10-05T11:14:32+00:00

    here is a recent ms kb on it from april, all the info, interesting that encryption gets enabled only

    if you sign in with a microsoft account, BitLocker drive encryption in Windows 10 for OEMs | Microsoft Learn

    why OEM,s what a pain, if you build a pc you have to manually turn it on , lol, ****, most retail PC motherboards used by people building their own PCs, for example, ship with TPM turned off by default.

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  3. Neil D 34,285 Reputation points Volunteer Moderator
    2023-10-05T11:22:30+00:00

    As I'm sure you are aware Window 11 requires an online account during setup. Unless you are aware of the workaround that is.

    Most users won't have that knowledge.

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  4. Anonymous
    2023-10-05T11:37:10+00:00

    ya, microsoft quietly release the bypass, so i use that when i reinstall windows 11 for a customer, 1st setup screen press shift+f10, it opens command prompt, type oobe\bypassnro and press enter, reboots with new option to log in without account, . (which i have memorized now) lol, i started to log in with my own , then create a local account then delete the my microsoft account, all my personal computers i have my microsoft account but i also create a local admin account ,its good to have local account for backup way to log in just in case, also if you dont want microsoft tracking your every move, and experimenting on you , lol

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  5. Neil D 34,285 Reputation points Volunteer Moderator
    2023-10-05T11:42:19+00:00

    Yep. Good find with the link on your previous post by the way.

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