So I have spent all day reading the forum and trying to deal with this problem that QB Desktop users are being FORCED to create an Intuit Account and log into the online account as well as their local company file with separate passwords and permissions.  Intuit tries to sell it as a security upgrade which is a flat out lie.  If you refuse to do so, after awhile Intuit actually LOCKS YOU OUT OF YOUR COMPANY FILE.  There used to be a work around by pressing Alt-F4 but after it was posted in this forum, the next update disabled the ability to do that.  This means, of course, that this is a deliberate move by QB to force everyone into a subscription of the product and so that they can force you to pay.  They are literally holding companies hostage until they give in.

Thanks to @Flyingkiwi @NoForcedAcct @Fibrepunk for the work around.  That is to go into the advanced settings of Windows Defender (or whatever firewall you are using) and specifically block the outbound port 443 for both QBW32.EXE and QBW32PRO.EXE (or QBW32PREMIUM or whatever version you are using, the second file is in the same directory as the first) programs.  This solution is posted on page 7 of this thread, posted by Fibrepunk on  ‎December 27, 2020 03:30 AM

In my case, I do not want to get any more updates from QB because I don’t want them to break this workaround so I have disabled qbupdate.exe in the startup (Ctrl-L Shift-esc then Startup) and I disabled the Intuit QuickBooks FCS service in the Services list.  This service also does background QB updates.  This means I should never get another update, but I’m fine with that.  What I have works for me.  Intuit will never get another dime from me, unfortunately.