Technology

59587 readers

3037 users here now

This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.

Our Rules

Follow the lemmy.world rules.
Only tech related content.
Be excellent to each another!
Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
Politics threads may be removed.
No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
Only approved bots from the list below, to ask if your bot can be added please contact us.
Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed

Approved Bots

founded 1 year ago

MODERATORS

A PR disaster: Microsoft has lost trust with its users, and Windows Recall is the straw that broke the camel's back (www.windowscentral.com)

submitted 5 months ago by lemmee_in@lemm.ee to c/technology@lemmy.world

444 comments fedilink hide all child comments

It's a nightmare scenario for Microsoft. The headlining feature of its new Copilot+ PC initiative, which is supposed to drive millions of PC sales over the next couple of years, is under significant fire for being what many say is a major breach of privacy and security on Windows. That feature in question is Windows Recall, a new AI tool designed to remember everything you do on Windows. The feature that we never asked and never wanted it.

Microsoft, has done a lot to degrade the Windows user experience over the last few years. Everything from obtrusive advertisements to full-screen popups, ignoring app defaults, forcing a Microsoft Account, and more have eroded the trust relationship between Windows users and Microsoft.

It's no surprise that users are already assuming that Microsoft will eventually end up collecting that data and using it to shape advertisements for you. That really would be a huge invasion of privacy, and people fully expect Microsoft to do it, and it's those bad Windows practices that have led people to this conclusion.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[–] ultratiem@lemmy.ca 1 points 5 months ago (4 children)

You guys trusted MS before this???

[–] admin@lemmy.my-box.dev 0 points 5 months ago

Is github, owned by Microsoft, the largest public code repository?

[–] Abnorc@lemm.ee 0 points 5 months ago

I remember when Windows 10 first came around, and people were trying to bring attention to the privacy issues in the TOS. Now it's been widely adopted just about everywhere, and this is probably going to be the same.

[–] ninekeysdown@lemmy.world 0 points 5 months ago

I’ve always trusted them to do what they’re great at… which is get a product nearly 100% perfect, then back it up about 20%, and polish it off by shooting themselves in the foot.

Which I’ve always found it insane that EVERY product they ship is like that. The only exceptions (IMHO) to that were Office, DOS5, Win7, (Maybe XP)

[–] TwilightVulpine@lemmy.world 0 points 5 months ago (1 children)

A couple years ago it wasn't thoroughly and transparently sucking off every bit of personal data it could get, and gearing up to put adds on the desktop on top of that.

[–] Linkerbaan@lemmy.world 0 points 5 months ago (1 children)

When was that

[–] Duamerthrax@lemmy.world 0 points 5 months ago (2 children)

Seems the consensus is that telemetry started with Win7, but I swear I remember privacy people freaking out about Win95 or 98 sending system specs or something back with out telling the user. It's been a slow boil for a long time.

[–] ultratiem@lemmy.ca 0 points 5 months ago

Yeah I think 7 was when it was a big blip on the radar. But 100% they had to start laying that foundation beforehand, so I wouldn’t be surprised if it was either always there or started making its way in 98.

95 was relatively groundbreaking and a part of me thinks the PC was so new they hadn’t thought of it yet or if it was even possible given the nature of internet, but you can’t put anything past the marketing guys that would probably love to know what colour your shit is.

[–] ninekeysdown@lemmy.world 0 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Yes & No.

From what I remember from that time it wasn’t really a lot of people going on about privacy at that time. We were more concerned with how they just grabbed the BSD networking stack without saying anything about it.

There were a few things w/rt activation that people were pissed about. That was more towards the XP era though.

Though maybe someone else remembers it differently than I do since I wasn’t paying attention to privacy at that point and I don’t remember seeing anything about it in PCMAG or G4

[–] Duamerthrax@lemmy.world 0 points 5 months ago

I vaguely remember something from TechTV or Slashdot. Searches only turn up more recent discussions though. The old stories are getting buried by the more recent shit going on.