Windows shouldn't be syncing across work and personal devices

Hi WinterKnell,

Thank you for writing to Microsoft Community Forums.

When Sync settings is turned on, Windows syncs the settings you choose across all your Windows 10 devices that you've signed in to with your Microsoft account.

You can also sync your settings for a work account if it’s allowed by your organization. For more info about how Azure Active Directory and Enterprise State Roaming work to synchronize user and app settings to the cloud, refer Enterprise State Roaming overview.

To find Sync settings, select the Start button, then select Settings > Accounts > Sync your settings.

To stop syncing your settings and remove them from the cloud, turn off synced settings on all the devices connected to your Microsoft account, and then go to the Devices page, select More actions for the device you want to manage, and then select Remove cloud backup of personal settings.

Choose from settings such as language preferences, passwords, and color themes. If you turn on Other Windows settings, Windows also syncs some device settings (for things like printers and mouse options), File Explorer settings, and notification preferences. For a complete list of settings that Windows can sync, see Windows 10 roaming settings reference.

You can also try go to Settings > Account page > Access work or school > Select the Office account and click on Disconnect.

Hope it helps.

Muralidhar

Microsoft Community Moderator

I cannot mark this response as resolving my issue, as all of the advice was demonstrably irrelevant. I had already done all but one of these steps. Syncing was, already, supposedly, OFF. I didn't even have the option to enable it. I draw your attention to my original post where I stated 'under "Sync your settings" the option is Off but, additionally, is flagged in yellow text "Sync is not available for your account. Contact your system administrator to resolve this."' Oh, and BTW, SYnc is off and the yellow "Sync is not available for your acount" message shows up on both laptops. Interesting. Who is the system administrator for my personal laptop anyway? In setting up the personal laptop I did not identify it as a device I wanted my organisation to manage.

I had already done everything you suggested, up to the very last paragraph where you said "You can also try go to Settings > Account page > Access work or school > Select the Office account and click on Disconnect." This advice too is irrelevant as under "Access work or school", the only email listed is my work address - which is in fact the only correct address for my work machine and therefore not to be disconnected.

The issue is the unasked-for insertion of my personal email account under "Your info" where it displays my local login account for the device, my personal email, and "Administrator". The arbitrary linking of my personal email to this work device, with no apparent way to remove it, is the core issue.

Further steps taken since OP: yesterday I removed my work account from Outlook on my personal machine. This afternoon, prior to coming here, I also found and severed the work machine from the list of devices showing on my personal email's Microsoft account (I had not placed it there), and I also removed my personal OneDrive from the work machine. However, when I logged into the work machine after doing this my personal email is still showing on Settings > Your info, even after rebooting. It shouldn't be there, I didn't put it there, and there seems to be no way for me to remove it.

The wallpaper hasn't changed again, so it's possible that at least removing the work machine from my list of devices has plugged some of the unwanted leakage of information across devices. However since the existing wallpaper is an image that was made and saved on my personal laptop using non-Microsoft software and never expressly uploaded to Microsoft nor placed in a folder that Microsoft has any right to finger through (it never touched OneDrive or any folder under Users, for example), the fact that the image made it onto my work laptop is still very concerning. Somehow that image made its way from one laptop to another via Microsoft's servers. The personal laptop has never left my house since it was delivered here, so at the very least some of my home bandwidth was consumed in illicitly uploading that data. I have no faith that it was the only data "synced", nor that the data was deleted after it reached Microsoft. I can always hope that it went no further than your Sydney servers.

I have a several stand alone  windows 10 home devices and I occasionally get this kind of message while attempting to access certain files on my device, even if I'm logged in as the built in Administrator (SID 500) which is part of the Administrators group....

"XYZ" is not available, Or you have been denied access to "ABC" by your System Administrator Contact your system administrator to resolve this."' 

I would also like to know who this mystery "System Administrator" is. Has NT Authority on my devices been hacked?  Something creepy is going on with Microsoft. These canned, vague non answers really suggests a dark side to Microsoft which is getting harder and and harder for them to hide.