If you speak or care to translate Dutch, you might also be interested in this other article on the same site:
https://tweakers.net/reviews/9094/all/account-geblokkeerd-wa...
Excerpt via Deepl.com:
> In all the conversations, it comes out how powerless people feel. You might think that if a company decides to algorithmically block people, there is a support department that can easily reverse mistakes, but that is not true. The department that deals with it is hard to reach. Or, as one customer service rep told BroncoJasperado, "The only team that has access to this is the team that you can reach through the form you already filled out. They are also not reachable by phone and are not located in an office that you can visit."
These are paying customers of Microsoft's.
Recently also a Dutch judge said MS had to unblock an account because MS could not provide the evidence why it was blocked. Something about american laws and child pornography that was allegedly stored on the account (I can look up the article if you want).
In most cases, the judge just rules it's fine because they're a commercial service and they are under no obligation to have you as a customer. You have to sue to even hear as much as "the cause was X" (even if they then can't/won't/don't provide X as evidence). There is little to no recourse.
A typical user whose MS account is banned might lose access to:
- Their game collection in Xbox / game pass
- All documents, pictures, etc. in OneDrive. A family member actually has all documents for their business on OneDrive because there is this history thing (can't permanently remove things by accident), MS guarantees your backups, it's all hands-off and super safe. On my recommendation, they did end up making an offline backup just in case... but I imagine that for every person like that family member, there are also a hundred business owners that would simply lose their business data.
- Microsoft Office products bought via 365
- Presumably purchases on the microsoft app store, but last I checked it contained only a few dummy apps and had horrible UX so I don't know how much this is used now
- Your email on Outlook.com
- And now also their computer? What is this, ransomware?
So for me, my Microsoft account being banned (one of probably a dozen by now) would have as impact that I can't play a game anymore that I paid for. I'd be pissed but it gets so much worse if you're a Windows user.
And it's not just MS, it's also Google (there the worst I could lose is a Youtube account where I've uploaded a few unpopular videos over the past decade), Facebook, etc.