Microsoft Won’t Keep Users of its Services Signed in Automatically in February

Microsoft is no longer planning to change the sign-in experience for personal Microsoft accounts in February. Last month, the company started notifying Outlook.com users that they would soon stay signed in automatically after entering their credentials unless they signed out or used private browsing.

The change was also communicated on a now-removed support page, but the company has now explained to The Verge that it was a mistake. It appears that the change may still be in the pipeline, however, even though Microsoft hasn’t provided a new timeline yet.

“There will be no changes to Microsoft users’ commercial (Microsoft Entra) or consumer (Microsoft account) sign in experiences in February,” told Alex Simons, corporate vice president of identity & network access program management at Microsoft, in a statement to The Verge. “Media reports were based on incomplete information mistakenly published by a Microsoft product team. The incorrect notifications have been removed.”

If Microsoft eventually goes forward with its plan to keep users of its services signed in automatically, this will be an important change that may require more than a month to be clearly communicated to consumers. You can’t expect all users to be careful and always remember to sign out of their account when using a device they don’t own. Private browsing sessions are also probably not something all users may be familiar with today.