alt Hacker News> address
Do not tell Microsoft where you sleep. IANAL but they are not a government or financial institution and do not have a right to that information.
Make sure you register mailing addresses with your credit card institutions in addition to your residential addresses, and make your mailing address your billing address so that you aren't forced to tell a thousand businesses like Microsoft where you sleep.
Replies
> Make sure you register mailing addresses with your credit card institutions
Sorry for a dumb question but what would one use as a mailing address? Rent a PO box, or use a mail forwarding service, something like that?
This is broadly impractical for the average citizen. A scalable solution would be to make this sort of thing illegal.
> IANAL but they are not a government or financial institution and do not have a right to that information.
As soon as you purchase something from Microsoft - e.g. your Office 365 subscription - they have at the very least your billing address on file for the credit card.
Windows 11 effectively forces users to register with a Microsoft account. Once that's established, all it takes is for an unaware user to fill out an e-commerce form and save an address for auto-fill.