Reply To: Software: On & Off the Web
When considering trying out the unpaid version of Personal Vault (PV for short), be urged to read the fine print beforehand, or incur all of what has befallen to this poor user in resorting to threads such as this for reference.
The extra 2FA security layer did look attractive at the time, so, upon activation through the explorer shell, the first epiphany came through loud and clear that nothing will happen if no files/folders are stored in the PV. After depositing a file in there, it’s not long before one finds out the unpaid version of the Vault will only hold a maximum of three files. If you place in there a folder containing more than 3 files, it will change colour, and the tooltip will be “Your Personal Vault is full.” As a matter of interest, stored an empty folder, and rebooted. A nasty series of notifications popped up, indicating the PV is locked, and the entire OneDrive synchronization will remain suspended until said PV is unlocked (to facilitate access to the grand total of one empty folder mind you.) In order to unlock it, one has to go through the 2FA process, where MS have turned off auto-suggest in the dialogs so that usernames and passwords have to be manually inserted. You then find that the PV automatically locks after a period of inactivity – 20 minutes on the web is default, but can be increased to four hours in the One Drive Settings Account page. To make it easy for users, this One Drive Settings page cannot be accessed from the usual settings dialog, only by right clicking the icon in the explorer navigation pane, and Microsoft have conveniently provided no hyperlink shortcuts like ms-settings for quick access to OneDrive-Settings.
One consequently finds that after repeat exercises of the 2FA unlock, the fun element begins to lose its shine, as does the prospect of running the PV at all, thus bringing the disable PV option into focus. Can be done, and as it so turns out, only through the browser interface, as opposed to the enabling exercise carried out above.
Ah, the things we do for the sake of security! 😛
