Shock, horror – I’m not going to argue with Microsoft’s latest bit of nagging in Windows 11, as this pop-up is justified

• Windows 11 has a new pop-up in testing, but this one could actually be useful
• It reminds those with a Microsoft account who haven’t set up their recovery access that they need to do so, to help defend against hackers
• Also, if you don’t have the recovery process sorted, you could run into thorny issues should you forget your password

Microsoft has another new piece of nagging in testing for Windows 11, although this particular reminder is a useful one (as opposed to the adverts that many of its ‘recommendations’ really are).

This is a change to nudge people to ensure that the recovery mechanism for their Microsoft account is in place, and it’s appearing in a fresh Windows 11 preview for the Dev and Beta channels (build 26120.3380 of 24H2).

The pop-up, or toast notification as it’s officially known, reminds the Windows 11 user to add a secondary email, or a phone number, to their account for recovery purposes.

This will only be presented to people who are signed into their Microsoft account on the PC, and don’t have said recovery feature enabled (as you might guess).

Analysis: A step to defend your account against getting hacked

Why is this a good kind of nudge, as opposed to the more annoying efforts (which border on adverts, or are actually ads, like the one for PC Game Pass)? Mainly because it’s genuinely important that you perform the recovery setup for your Microsoft account.

For the uninitiated, the recovery procedure comes into play when you’ve forgotten your password and therefore can’t get into your account, to enable you to recover access. Of course, Microsoft needs to be sure that it’s you – and not a nefarious hacker – trying to gain access to the account, and so needs a method of verifying that which a hacker wouldn’t be able to avail themselves of. Namely that secondary email address, or better still, your smartphone, which can provide a verifying factor, and then allow you to reset the forgotten password to something else.

I’d argue, then, that Microsoft isn’t out of line in prompting the Windows 11 user to sort this out, as it is important to do so (you could say the same about the recent prod to backup your PC, too, though that’s a little different in my book).

Anyway, in this instance, Microsoft’s nag gets a pass from me, but apparently it is still possible to turn it off should you wish. As Windows Latest observes (without confirming it’s the case), the pop-up should be disabled by turning off all of the ‘Additional Settings’ sliders under System > Notifications in the Settings app.

At any rate, it’s worth remembering that this is only rolling out in the early stages of testing at the moment, and it may not reach the release version of Windows 11. I’d imagine it’s likely to make the cut and come to all Windows 11 users eventually, though.

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