Microsoft Quietly Removes Local Account Instructions for Windows 11 134
Microsoft has quietly erased instructions for switching to a local account on Windows 11 from its official support website. The move took place between June 12 and June 17, 2024, according to Tom's Hardware. The tech giant has been increasingly pushing users towards Microsoft Account logins, citing benefits like enhanced security and cross-device syncing. While the option to use a local account still exists, this latest development suggests Microsoft is steering users away from it.
Great for those who love stalking (Score:5, Funny)
Stalkers and abusive ex-spouses love all of Microsoft's recent decisions. It makes tracking their victims much, much easier. Really great that Microsoft supports this neglected market segment.
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Re:Great for those who love stalking (Score:5, Funny)
Let's be honest, stalkers are living in unprecedented times. Back in "the day" you had to go outside [youtube.com], wait outside homes, sift through trash, intercept mail. It was work, now you can just sit back and wait for the object of your desired to just straight up tell you things.
Does no-one remember FourSquare? Social media entirely built around the concept of "all these people are currently at this location. We know because they all told us!"
Re:Great for those who love stalking (Score:4, Interesting)
You can't use file sharing or remote desktop with the microsoft account however. The Microsoft account makes everything much of a pain
So Glad (Score:5, Interesting)
Took me thirty years to escape Windows.
Found equivalents to all the software I need. Learned Linux backwards and forwards. Learned to maintain my own system. Learned to persuade clients to stop blaming me for their proprietary traps. Set up my own services. Wrote my own software when necessary.
Words cannot describe how important it was.
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Congrats, seriously. I'm still tethered by multiplayer shooters and their windows-only anticheat (piece of shit EAC).
May I suggest the next step?
Migrate to a CPU that doesn't have the integrated spy chip (Intel IME/AMD PSP)
Re: So Glad (Score:2)
There is EAC on Linux.
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Me too. I've been using *BSD/Linux forever on the server side of things, but for a number of reasons (mostly having to support it and general inertia) kept windows on my main box all these decades, until about a year ago. What really made the difference for me to be able to overcome the inertia and remove Windows from my life is when I was able to take my windows boot image with me with into QEMU/KVM. That gave me the peace of mind to be able to make the jump and not look back. First few months I'd have
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I bought a Mac.
(Only being funny, Apple has its own mega corp pathologies).
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I never bothered to really master Linux. I don't need to. It was be nice if I did, but I never even got through "Linux from Scratch".
OTOH, I haven't needed to. I've found (so far) that a mix of standard mate and KDE does everything that I need, except resurrect dead companies. (I really wish Loki had lasted a bit longer.)
FWIW, these days I generally use Python. C++ is too much bother (and it's missing some of the "batteries" included with Python).
Re: So Glad (Score:2)
Normal people are supposed to do the same thing they do when they run into a Windows SNAFU. Ask a nerd to help. They don't know how to edit the registry or dick with powershell any more than they know how to edit config files or run commands in the shell.
Re: So Glad (Score:5, Funny)
Also while I'm here, the irony of someone who is named after two programs which have complex conf files saying they never want to see another one is immense. Skill issue much?
Re:So Glad (Score:5, Interesting)
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OK, now, click that little button with the picture of the squashed stink bug...
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As opposed to the Linux way of fixing stuff, just copy/paste this random command you found on Stack Exchange, or pipe this script directly from wget into your terminal with sudo. If that doesn't work, recompile your kernel.
Recall Recalled . . . (Score:4, Interesting)
Personal Computing dies more each day. (Score:5, Informative)
If Corporate data leaches knew then what they know now, the Personal Computer would have never even been a thing. I hope you enjoy(ed) it while it lasts(ed).
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Sure they were less powerful, often awkward, but the breadth of ideas was enormous.
Re: Personal Computing dies more each day. (Score:2)
What brilliant ideas were around in the late 70s/early 80s but are no longer with us?
I've had 40 years in and around computers, and I can't think of anything 'meaningful' that we've 'lost' from that Era... Non-relational databases? COBOL everywhere? Actual dumb terminals? SCSI interfaces on hard drives? VMs? What? What are missing today? Everything that was spread across the industry then has been collapsed into a couple OSes, and big iron OS keep chugging along (MVS, etc).
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Important for backups (Score:3)
Our AI needs a backup copy of all your data.
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If they'd guarantee to manage secure backups, I think people would pay them to do so. But for serious people the guarantee would need to be both enforceable and lived up to.
Microsoft is an abusive partner (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Microsoft is an abusive partner (Score:5, Insightful)
Not that I disagree with you, but...
It pays companies to use Anti-cheat to stop Proton
I'll look past the 'citation needed' here, and put at least a part of the onus on the game developers. Game devs *could* solve this by developing some single player games; let users cheat all they want; it's their play-through. If they want to make multi-player games, they can go back to allowing users to run their own multiplayer servers...but then we run into issues like Unreal Tournament 2004 where people payed for a game once and dedicated servers for a 20-year-old game have higher player counts than Marvel's Avengers. Game devs could avoid using AC entirely, but AC is part of what allows them to depreciate $GAME_YEAR-3 when they want to sell $GAME_YEAR.
Adobe sabotages Gimp development.
Again, foregoing the 'citation needed' here, Adobe is actually feeling some squeeze at this point with Serif Affinity, as well as a number of other tools. They also felt some backlash with their recent EULA changes, and I've got a number of clients who are looking for Acrobat alternatives. It's a slow drip, but Adobe isn't quite the only-game-in-town they once were.
The film industry uses Linux just fine
They also write their own code. Pixar's Renderman software runs just fine on RHEL and its derivatives, and Blender3D is pretty well supported industry-wide as well.
but Adobe keeps the rest of the creative industry bound to both its own license and Windows license in a cartel.
I mean...it still runs just fine on MacOS, and they've got pared down iOS and Android versions, so it's not like it's MS exclusive software.
You know Stallman was right that's why they ran hit pieces against him.
Oh, it depresses me as well that Right To Read seemed to be perceived more as an instruction manual rather than a warning...but even if we ignored all of the accusations of impropriety *and* we ignored his need of an image consultant, Stallman's principled stance is as much a weakness as a strength.
There are 'degrees of openness', but the FSF doesn't seem to want to recognize them. A phone that ships with a closed-source OS and a binary blob for the modem, but an unlocked bootloader and support for LineageOS, is WAY more open than an iPhone, but the FSF won't certify one even to a 'partially open' degree, so that puts a 'mostly open' phone and a 'actively user hostile phone' on the same level...that doesn't really help anyone.
Shifting back to software...Affinity may be closed source, and even require activation, but the FSF could function as an escrow service to ensure that users of perpetual licenses will never have to worry about activation servers going down...but again, can't have that because it's not all-the-way Free Software. Adobe didn't need to run hit pieces on Stallman to discredit the FSF; the 'all-the-way-open-or-gtfo' stance makes the FSF less of a bastion of freedom and simply a different oppressor.
Google is the same with killing alternative browser development just to keep their ad monopoly. Firefox is just a "release valve" at this point, a true alternative would be murdered by Google.
Well, Google's de facto control over web standards means that it's basically impossible to have a viable competitor to Chrome that isn't a fork of either Chromium or Firefox. I always laugh when I think back to the "MS is evil because IE6" crowd, who all use Chrome and the rest of the entire Google stack, and think they've accomplished something...even IE6 + IIS6 wasn't as much of a stranglehold, and it's notable that MS didn't keep Trident around, which I think they should have.
I agree with you on this one; Firefox exists because Google pays them to exist, and Google pays them to exist so that they don't get DoJ slapped the way MS did...but the real way to ensure viable competition is to simplify the web standards enough so that a group of three industrious, dedicated developers *could* write a new browser from the ground up. As long as Google controls what constitutes 'standards compliant', they don't have to murder a competitor.
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>Adobe sabotages Gimp development.
As if they would even need to do that. GIMP devs have been sabotaging themselves since its inception.
EU (Score:2)
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As long as the feature is there, I think EU will not do anything. Presumably the instruction will be available in various other websites.
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We will see. It really depends on who complains when. They clearly are in violation of the GDPR which says the non-online version must be the default, but others are too and there is a backlog.
Re: EU (Score:2)
The EU is going to enforce documentation requirements on support websites?
Harbinger? (Score:5, Interesting)
The fact that the low-contrast text option, as well as the 'are you sure' screens in Windows 10's OOBE, weren't enough to dissuade people, apparently...so Windows 11's local account setup involves having to specifically know how to set up a local account and then doing it, either with Rufus, or with Shift+F10 -> oobe\bypassnro.
My curiosity is whether MS will, at some point, force existing local users to create a Microsoft account. I mean, I'm generally expecting Windows 12 to just require either a MS account or a domain/Entra login with no support for local users at all...but will that be the case for Win11 at some point as part of one of their "feature packs"? ...and MS wonders why everyone screamed bloody murder at Recall.
Re:Harbinger? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Harbinger? (Score:5, Insightful)
If they force it, then how? What about PCs without internet connections? PCs behind secure firewalls in private networks?
If they do this, I suspect the next mandatory change will be enforced use of OneDrive, and once some powerful people lose all their files this way it's going to be very exciting.
Re: Harbinger? (Score:2)
FFS, this isn't a 'mandatory requirement' - they took some text off a support site that explained how to setup a local account.
The drama around MS doing anything is crazy around here...
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Well, there's a trajectory. Microsoft has been making it gradually harder over the years. It's not a huge leap to follow that projectory and predict that they will get rid of it for Home accounts at least.
Re:Harbinger? (Score:5, Informative)
Having just done this a few days ago, I strongly recommend using the Rufus method. Far easier.
https://www.howtogeek.com/8361... [howtogeek.com]
Also: Microsoft is being evil here. I strongly recommend setting up local accounts instead of cloud-based accounts. You can tie in later if you want. But for many home users (and many work/enterprise users), the cloud tie-in is unnecessary and an extra possible security/privacy vulnerability.
Enhanced security? (Score:5, Insightful)
How can security be enhanced if your data is flung to the outside world and held by someone else with a known history of having insecure processes?
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In is an instance of the "Big Lie" technique: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
They would probably also claim the MS account reduces terrorism, drug dealing and child abuse: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
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There is one important way in which this improves security. The hidden "Local Admin" account is no longer capable of compromising other accounts on the machine.
It used to be, when I would fix a friend's computer, I wouldn't even ask them for their password. I would just unhide the local admin (which by default has no password), then set the owner's password to whatever I wanted. Then I would proceed with repairs, and when I was done, I'd tell them what my new password was, so they could change it back. For
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I'm sure that there's no conceivable way to fix their broken user security model that wouldn't require logging in via the cloud.
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I'm not so sure.
Without the cloud, how do you reset a lost password? There's no mechanism on a local-only system to send you a password reset email or text. You're stuck with having a local administrator do it. And what if you've lost the local administrator password? Time to reformat. You know, like that guy that can't remember the password to his hardware Bitcoin wallet.
Today's MFA practically requires you to have something online, and there are really no viable alternatives.
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You could do it like Linux: If you didn't encrypt your drive, boot off of a live USB distro, find the account in question on the HD, and set its password. (In general, if you have local access to the system, *any* unencrypted OS has zero security anyway.)
If you did encrypt your drive, you're SOL. But hopefully, you wrote down a recovery key when you created the encrypted drive. Maybe MS would even encourage you to send them the recovery key, but unlike online accounts, it could be designed to be pretty usel
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That idea, booting off the USB distro, is essentially what you have to do to enable the Windows built-in administrator account. Boot from USB, set a registry key, boot again with Admin account enabled, log in with blank password.
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I don't see how you can't do that with a Microsoft accounts enabled either, boot up the computer change whatever you need to enable a local account, (As far as I am aware you can have both in windows 10 concurrently, probably in windows 11 too). If you can boot from external media then you own the system, or you can pull out the drive and change it that way.
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That's security based upon having a physical access. It also could be considered a bug in Microsoft's design.
What does a Microsoft Account actually do, in technical terms, that improves security? If it has to get permission from Redmond for all activities here, locking out even local admin accounts, is that security or is it just remote control? Or is Windows actually forbidding local admin accounts from being actual full access Administrator?
What if you need to have separate Admin and User accounts, do
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The Windows Administrator account (yes, it's actually called "Administrator") is already separate from the account you use to log in. This account is different from having "Local Admin" permissions on *your* account. It's a separate account entirely.
The thing is, if you forgot your password and need to reset it, how do you do that without a cloud identity provider? And if your answer is "use the Administrator account"...what do you do if you forget *that* password? You're sunk, because your local-only syste
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Well, yes. You keep that password written down, and safe. Which is safer having some third party know it, or able to manipulate accounts on your local computer.
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The default Windows Administrator password is just...blank (no password). And since it's a hidden account, 99% of people don't know it exists, and never change it.
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I didn't know about it. I just created a new account with my name, made it admin, then removed admin from my mom's main account. Luckily I doubt anyone could talk her through using it over the phone, it would be too complex.
Re:Enhanced security? (Score:4, Interesting)
If you want to break into a Windows system (either black hat hacking, or white hack -- e.g., getting around a forgotten password), you can reset with the free tiny Linux utility:
http://www.chntpw.com/download... [chntpw.com]
You can also use this to re-enable the local administrator account if it's disabled.
The way to defend against this is to use BitLocker disk encryption. (VeraCrypt probably would work as well, but not 100% certain.) BitLocker will block access to the encrypted disk via a USB / CD / DVD boot up unless you also supply the decryption password.
Ran into this a week or so ago at work. Wanted to get into a laptop that hadn't been on the network for ages, and had a deleted domain account. We didn't know the local administrator account. Went to use the chntpw tool via a USB flash drive, but couldn't get it past BitLocker, and we didn't know the unique BitLocker key for that system . So couldn't read/write the hard drive offline.
So, in the end, all we could do was re-partition and re-format that laptop.
(I've used chntpw to recover/get around probably 100+ systems over the past 10 years: forgotten local passwords, the dude who knew it was fired or quit months/years ago, I fatfingered the password when creating it, I forgot to write down the password, etc. Very, very useful -- when it works.)
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What you're talking about, using the default hidden Administrator account, hasn't been possible since Vista.
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Microsoft Account logins will give Microsoft enchanced profit security.
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What is "security" in this context? What is local account unable to do other that perhaps give a slight boost to an intruder who has physical access to the PC? I've got a local admin account with a password, I don't see how this is more vulnerable than a system that lets Microsoft snoop all the data and know when you're logged in or not. If there are enhanced security protocols or crypto algorithm that come with Microsoft Login then this is ONLY because Microsoft chooses to make local accounts less secure
Hate this (Score:3)
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I think no local account on Windows would be the final straw for me. I would switch to Apple. I mean, I have an Apple sitting right next to me. A few things I like about Windows better, but I could sure learn to live with an Apple if need be. I do have an account on Apple because I pretty much had to, BUT for some reason, I trust Apple more than Microsoft.
I used Linux on the desktop for almost a decade, but I needed to use Visual Studio.
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Apple's account iCloud stuff can be turned off. Location data is turned off too. Ironically Maps works much better if location data is turned off. It stops returning to base as it were, so you stay where you last were, very handy when you reviewing the Solomon Islands campaigns in WW2.
Re: Hate this (Score:2)
Mac isnâ(TM)t a walled garden. Microsoft seems to want iOS levels of lockdown, overtaking even Apple on the desktop in that regard.
Notably itâ(TM)s easy to log into both Mac and iOS without an Apple account.
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Microsoft has almost always been about copying others. Yes, they want to replicate the Apple store, that's clear. Yes, they wanted to make their own smart phone. Yes, they want to do AI. If someone else is doing it, Microsoft feels the need to also do it.
Not an Option on USB Install (Score:5, Insightful)
I recently installed Win11 from a USB image. There wasn't an option to use a local account. This made it difficult because I was building for a remote family member. I discovered that if I would have checked an option when I built the image using Rufus, that it's something I could have still turned on. I don't know exactly what kind of hack that is, but it seems really strange.
What makes me sad is the threatening messages I get on my Windows 10 machine. "Your machine doesn't support Windows 11, but you have to get off Win 10 anyway." Why would I do that? Win 11 is one of those 'skip' releases, like Vista or Win 8.
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I don't know if this still applies to 11, but on 10, if you pulled the ethernet connection and never set up a WIFI connection during setup, it would let you create a local account in order to proceed with setup.
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Windows 10 is going end of life (EOL) on Oct 14, 2025. Microsoft *might* extend this, but don't count on it. (They have extended EOL dates for other Windows versions in the past.)
After that date, Windows 10 systems won't get new security updates except if you have a paid account. (Or do some complicated workarounds / hacks.)
That's OK (maybe) if you have a system that will *NEVER* go online. Otherwise, using an OS after its EOL is very risky. This is true of any OS (including Unix/Linux).
So, like it or
The unkillable method (Score:5, Interesting)
Just unplug your ethernet cable during the Windows install. When they get rid of that then it is truly over.
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Funny thing, I have a Win10 VM with a completely legitimate license and no networking, ever. Occasionally it annoys me by claiming the windows version is not activated (it was correctly activated and confirmed that at that time) with the message that stays on top on the lower right-hand screen side. I would call that fraudulent business practices.
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Honestly, if it were me and I knew I had a valid key, just crack that shit at that point. Shit some of those tools make it easier to inject your own valid key than the official methods.
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Indeed. Off at startup, sometimes shows up after a while.
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That doesn't work anymore. It won't let you pass the network section. What is working is if you select join a domain. There you will see an option to make an offline account.
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It's been a few months since I did a Win11 install so I will keep an eye out. It someitmes made you go back and forth a couple times if you had a wifi adapter built in. Thanks for the alternate tho
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FYI, there's a few guys on YT that appear to be keeping up on every new ISO and reporting the latest work arounds.
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They got rid of that a couple years ago. If you set up a current, unmodified Windows 11 ISO these days and you don't have internet access during setup, the installer will tell you that the installation has to stop until you have internet access. It'll also puke now if you try to create a domain account for a non-existent domain, which used to work on Windows Pro/Workstation SKUs.
There are still ways past that: You can either set up an unattend.xml ahead of time telling the installer to create a local accoun
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Yes. However the summary is about migrating existing accounts, not initial Windows installation.
For me, my current PC I went with a microsoft account initially, intended to be temporary only. This was naively to help the migration of files, hoping that it would mgirate over settings and the like more smoothly (based upon a terrible time when I copied files from a backup which meant it had a different user ID than the new user). This was a mistake - it loaded up OneDrive with it's poorly thought out defaul
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Just unplug your ethernet cable during the Windows install. When they get rid of that then it is truly over.
That is exactly what they did. You cannot complete the first time install/setup of Windows 11 Home without connectivity to a network anymore, period.
For oldtimers ... (Score:5, Informative)
net user Username Password /add /add
net localgroup Administrators Username
This is nothing really new (Score:2)
Microsoft has been making it progressively more difficult to set up a Windows system without a Microsoft account for years, or at least since Windows 10 was released. My two Windows 10 systems (laptop and desktop, both dual boot) are both migrations from Windows 7 so many of their standard restrictions do not apply.
I occasionally help friends set their systems up and I always make sure I have a copy of a German computer magazine called C't with me, the most recent edition where they tell you which hoops to
Lets screw the users some more... (Score:2)
It is high time MS gets nuked (preferably literally). The later that step comes (and come it must), the larger the damage will be.
I bought a cheap chinese laptop for an elderly (Score:2)
friend, it claimed to be running Windows 11 pro.
When he registered it, it created a local account. It made no attempt to link to a Microsoft account or create one.
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Maybe that's because they didn't actually give you a legit copy of Windows?
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That could be a big difference. I have Pro version (migrated from Windows 8 Pro where I got it for $14.95). Windows Home however treats the paying customer like pond scum. Though to be fair, it also treats Pro and Enterprise users as just slightly more refined types of scum.
Windows is nothing but a gaming platform (Score:2)
Meanwhile, I'm still having no problems creating.. (Score:2)
A local account in Ubuntu. Maybe it's time for fans of local storage and account management to upgrade to a different platform?
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Oh you sweet summer child [slashdot.org].
Microsoft account a virus especially with onedrive (Score:2)
I maintain a computer with a bunch of shared logins on it that a number of different people use. One person signed into his microsoft account and activated OneDrive, but signed out. Turns out you can't remove OneDrive or the Microsoft account link without having him sign back in. If this person had left the company, the only thing I could have done was nuke and pave that account. Not the biggest deal, but a pain, given the program settings that this account needed. I managed to get rid of the OneDrive st
Windows is slowly losing its relevance (Score:3)
The last remaining case where it still has clear superiority is probably PC gaming. The gaming situation on Linux has improved a lot but you still have usability issues, troubleshooting issues, Intel and Nvidia doing a crap job of Linux support, and issues with anticheat/DRM preventing games from working at all. However, PC gaming isn't all gaming, and a lot of people are perfectly happy with a console or even their phone as their primary gaming device. I think PC is still the dominant platform, but with mobile gaming becoming more popular than ever (even I'm doing that crap now) and with console subscription services being "good enough" for a lot of casual gamers, I don't think PC dominance is a long-term given.
I will still personally stick with scrubbed Windows for as long as I can get away with it, but I'm a clear edge case; if I had to pick one topic I knew more about than anything else, it'd be Windows. Your average person isn't in that situation. I think you're going to continue to see Windows' relevance fade over the next 10-20 years.
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It's not especially that more and more stuff typically done by Windows is becoming viable on other platforms, it's rather that working through a web interface is getting more and more viable.
This means that, as long as you have a browser, you can run any application. Browsers are easy to obtain and are generally compatible with one another. So, the actual OS becomes irrelevant.
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To a significant extent because of Microsoft itself and Office 365. Meanwhile Apple sticks to Swift. Microsoft is high on the income from web services and cloud, but it has completely botched accessing the potential income stream from ecosystem which it could have had.
I think Apple's strategy will be the more successful strategy in the long run.
Microsoft ... always copying Apple poorly (Score:2)
Microsoft has enough benefits to make Microsoft accounts attractive to users, they don't need to be heavy handed.
Just offer local accounts and warn people that they won't be able to use the Microsoft store, Gamepass, Xbox account, OneDrive or Microsoft 365. Yes, some people will use local accounts, but increasingly they won't if they steadily improve those services.
Instead they try to force it and just get bad PR and user experience. Why does Microsoft have to be so incompetent? I don't like Apple.
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Microsoft store, Don't need.
Gamepass, Don't need,
Xbox account, Don't have one, don't need.
OneDrive, don't need,
Microsoft 365, don't need.
Doesn't MS charge for all of those? There's the point.
Re:Microsoft won (Score:5, Interesting)
Linux isn't really a viable competitor if you do anything but web programming. If you game, make music or stream content Linux has a host of limitations.
For me, there's nothing I need Windows for that I can't do on Linux. It's more the other way around. I'm not saying Linux doesn't have limitations for certain things people do on Windows, but to say you can't do "anything but web programming" isn't my experience at all. From my perspective, Windows is the OS with limitations.
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It's almost that way at work. Development is done using Windows-Subsystem-for-Linux. On the Windows side, 99% of it is web browser, 0.9% is Office (that work and Microsoft both want migrated to be online), and 0.1% are the few binaries that someone wants me to use that are Windows only (debug tools, etc).
But, Linux that that has a Windows VM would work just fine. Except setting up that VM is a painful thing, and if you use it infrequently the first time you startup the VM after a month or two being idle,
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MS has not won. They just got enough rope to hang themselves. And as their numerous screw-ups (which seem to be getting worse and are now on "threat to national security"-level) show, they are intent on getting that hanging sooner than later, all for a quick buck. May still take years of even a few decades, but I see no way for MS to not go down in flames. Obviously, the later they get what they deserve, the larger the damage to society.
Re:Microsoft lost me (Score:2)
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Outlook used to be the thng that tied enterprises to Windows. Or in particular, Microsoft Exchange Server. It stopped a lot of alternative operating systems from being adopted - Outlook in Mac wasn't so good for a long time, Linux couldn't easily get your emails, sometimes people used Outlook extensions that other readers couldn't decode. Outlook tied the email and calendar together which became a must-have feature. But more recently, Outlook online works just fine, even from a browser on Linux. Outloo
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Interesting point. Maybe MS is not always knowing what it is doing on the business side as well?
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We refused to vote for politician that would strictly enforce anti-trust law.
You assume that the Party would allow anyone who would strictly enforce anti-trust law to be on the ballot.
Yes, I know that there are some "third-party" options, but unfortunately too many people blindly follow either "Team Red" or "Team Blue."
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Microsoft pushes that accounts so heavily that you just knew it is because the accounts make them money. How a free account makes money implies a lot of nefarious possibilities...
MacOS did not need an online acount for ages (maybe it still doesn't?). iOS did, but that's sort of standard for phones where almost all the apps are online anyway and won't work if mobile data is off.
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Sure, if you want that stuff, which should be optional, then use the account, which should also be optional. Office 365 could also be a separate account (ie, you're using the work license to do work at home).