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
    2023-10-04T14:12:19+00:00

    like this, also did you get windows 11 from microsoft site using the media creation tool, ? also if you have a dell or hp it wont ask you home or pro, it will install which ever verion your computer came with as the key for home or pro is embedded in the bios, on any pc that game with windows 8 or later, notice my screenshot, it say on left system information app , Windows 10 Pro, 11 will be the same as this, and on the right bitlocker , you should not see this in HOME, only PRO, Home should just say device encryption, its simalar only bitlocker has the ability to encrypt external and other drives, where device encryption only the main drive, either way if its on will have option to turn it off after fresh install if tpm is on in bios, as it uses tpm, if tpm is off there will be no option to encrypt.

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  2. Anonymous
    2023-10-04T13:58:15+00:00

    this makes no sence, can you post a screen shot of where it says bitlocker in your windows and also that you are running windows Home, THERE IS NO BITLOCKER IN HOME ONLY PRO HOME HAS ONLY DEVICE ENCRYPTION (difference can only encrypt the main drive, , and yes if TPM in bios is on, then every time i reinstall windows on dell or hp, i have to go to settings and turn it off every time, or disable tpm in bios before install and it will be off,

    also please read and under stand every thing in the following link from microsoft, and see where it says" NOTE, you will only see this if you have Windows PRO, under bitlocker.

    Turn on device encryption - Microsoft Support

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  3. Neil D 34,285 Reputation points Volunteer Moderator
    2023-10-04T13:29:48+00:00

    I'm sure that is true for Pro edition but doesn't seem to be the case for Home edition. When I first setup my laptop I had no idea that encryption was on, it was only while I was looking through settings and checked Disk Management that I saw the C:\ drive stated BitLocker.

    I had checked my Microsoft account to see if the new device had been added and it had. There was no enter for a Bitlocker recovery key. Which I checked out after seeing Bitlocker in Disk Management.

    That was when I started to look for a method to save the key. It is in Control Panel > Device encryption but there is no option to turn it off. This is why I said that manufacturers should make new users aware of the encryption and state a backup of the recovery key is a must.

    Following a clean install of Windows 11 Home last week I found BitLocker enabled after the install was finished.

    It's no good finding encryption enabled when you have a problem and it asks for the key. I found after booting from a Ubuntu live USB the next time I started windows it asked for the BitLocker key.

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  4. Anonymous
    2023-10-04T11:29:44+00:00

    i had a customer one time, no way to get the key and could not get past it, for him i had to format the drive and reinstall windows and showed him how to turn off bitlocker, but he had window 10 pro, it is possable for malisious code to create this havic also, but after words i realized , if this was acctually his device he could

    have logged into another device using the same microsoft account to get the key, Log into your Microsoft account. · Click "All Devices," find the name of your computer, then tap "Show details." · Select Manage > Get BitLocker ...

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  5. Anonymous
    2023-10-04T11:05:08+00:00

    i can be related also to your microsoft account and not windows,

    need to recover acount on other device to get the key if that is the case, here is the document,

    Where to look for your BitLocker recovery key - Microsoft Support

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