Onedrive saving data without consent

Question

Hi,

How can I stop Onedrive from saving my files without my consent?

I have tried my best to remove Onedrive access to my windows account but do use it for a separate Student account for college work. The separate onedrive account works and successfully saves my college work when needed.

I managed to delete all my personal files from onedrive and after a lot of reading managed to alter the registry to locate the "My Documents" folder to the one on my PC rather than the onedrive account.

For some reason it has now reverted to using a onedrive documents folder and has saved all of my information to this folder as well as backing up all of my other personal information such as music and pictures.

I believe that this violates my rights under the data use act as Microsoft is actively backing up my information to its systems without my consent and after I have actively removed them from their systems.

How am I able to prevent Onedrive from doing this so that I am satisfied that only I have access to my own personal information?

Answer 1

Hello Blue,

I am Jaspreet Singh an independent advisor.

Click on the small onedrive cloud icon in your taskbar (You may need to click on the up arrow to see it)

Then click on help and settings and then again on settings.

Then in the pop up window click on backup tab in the same popup window.

click on manage backup and untick all three (desktop/documents and pictures)

Make sure all these three options have stopped backing up .once this is done close the backup window

You will need to visit the location where these folders were and then you will see a link with the title “where are my files” click on that and then it will take you to the files location. Copy and paste the data back to their respective folders.

That is all. OneDrive will not backup your data from these libraries any longer. please let me know if you face any issues.

Answer 2

Thanks for the fast response Jaspreet,

I have manged to do this but I had to follow some annoying steps to get there.

Because I had uninstalled onedrive from my system in an attempt to stop it taking over my file locations I did not have the option to change what was saved. Logging in to the browser didn't seem to give me those options either.

I downloaded the app again and followed your steps to change the settings and that worked thanks.

Sadly now I cannot remove the app and the documents folder is stuck thinking that it must use the onedrive location that no longer exists.

I can't change the location (option not there in properties) and the location seems right in the registry but remains the onedrive location.

Answer 3

Try these steps :

Click on the small onedrive cloud icon in your taskbar

Then click on help and settings and then again on settings.

Then in the pop up window click on the first tab (settings)

Untick the last option that says "save space and download files as you use them"

(This will start the process of downloading all your data from the cloud back to your device)

In addition to this untick the first option that says "start onedrive automatically when I sign in to windows " (this will prevent its autostart)

Once the data has finished downloading (You can verify that by looking at the folders) click on backup tab in the same popup window.

ensure that the backup is still off.

At this point please visit www.onedrive.com and compare to your system and look for any data that is still missing in your system. Download it and make a backup since we will unlink onedrive and that data which has not been download will be lost.

Once you have verified go to the Account tab on the onedrive popup window and click on unlink this pc. Confirm your choice and onedrive will be removed from your file manager (You may not be able to delete onedrive app completely from your system since it is an integrated part of onedrive but it will not longer access your files or back them up)

One additional step can be to right click on taskbar then click on taskmanager.

Click on More details at the bottom and then click on Startup tab.

Search for onedrive in the list (if it is not there you may ignore this step)

Right click on it and click on disable.

That is all please let me know if you face any issues.