this post was submitted on 08 Jun 2024
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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.

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[–] naeap@sopuli.xyz 1 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (4 children)

Microsoft has built a number of safety features into Windows Recall to ensure that the service can't run secretly in the background. When Windows Recall is enabled, it places a permanent visual indicator icon on the Taskbar to let the user know that Windows Recall is capturing data. This icon cannot be hidden or moved.

Oh my, that one is really cute

[–] uriel238@lemmy.blahaj.zone 1 points 5 months ago

Malware will disable that icon. Law enforcement will buy thay malware.

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

Well find out in 10 years that that wasn’t true and that it did capture data when the icon wasn’t present whoopsies.

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[–] ultratiem@lemmy.ca 1 points 5 months ago (9 children)

You guys trusted MS before this???

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[–] AWittyUsername@lemmy.world 1 points 5 months ago (8 children)

Apple ensures its operating systems are clean, polished, and without bloat.

Except for all the uninstallable Apple bloat such as Apple Music, Apple TV, etc. And the numerous bugs and issues, such as still not being able to have the touch pad and mouse scroll wheel have different settings.

[–] echodot@feddit.uk 1 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (3 children)

I remember when everyone was complaining about how terrible Safari is. The lead developer started having a go and ranting on Twitter, saying that raising bug reports is not constructive feedback.

That was a mess.

[–] ReveredOxygen@sh.itjust.works 1 points 5 months ago (3 children)

Do you have any links? Not that I don't believe you, I just can't find anything on it and it seems very entertaining

[–] BleatingZombie@lemmy.world 1 points 5 months ago (2 children)

This feels like the kind of thing I would watch a 2 hour long youtube deep dive video on, haha

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[–] dmtalon@infosec.pub 1 points 5 months ago (8 children)

Ya, a PR nightmare for the next 15 minutes until the next unbelievable thing comes along and the ADD nature of people forgets windows is watching everything they do.

[–] FlashMobOfOne@lemmy.world 0 points 5 months ago (23 children)

That's usually what I think too, but after watching how Twitter's gone to shit since the two big user departures, I think this could legitimately affect Microsoft's bottom line.

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

That will rely on businesses moving away from Windows. That is where they make a ton of their money with Enterprise licenses and Office 365 subscriptions.

[–] Infynis@midwest.social 1 points 5 months ago (3 children)

And businesses don't give a shit about their employees' privacy

[–] Starkstruck@lemmy.world 1 points 5 months ago

They do care about keeping their company secrets and proprietary info though. Recall could make corporate espionage a cake walk.

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

I figured on my gaming and VR right that I’d begrudgingly upgrade it to W11 when W10 stopped receiving security updates and support but at this point the recall feature (which will be used to train LLMs regardless of what Microsoft promises or guarantees) has ensured that I never install that kind of spyware as an operating system.

I’d rather spend forever troubleshooting and getting my Valve Index to work with Ubuntu than deal with a giant backdoor.

[–] areyouevenreal@lemm.ee 1 points 5 months ago (12 children)

I wouldn't go for Ubuntu. They are also run by a corporation that has done problematic things with the project. It also just doesn't work that well anymore. Better off going for something Debian or Fedora based, or even an Ubuntu derivative like Pop OS.

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[–] skillissuer@discuss.tchncs.de 0 points 5 months ago (3 children)

better get W10 LTSC in VM and use it until EOL and beyond, it'll be more privacy friendly this way

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[–] PrivateNoob@sopuli.xyz 0 points 5 months ago

You could try win 10 iot ltsc 2021 out. It gets security support until 2032.

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[–] cupcakezealot@lemmy.blahaj.zone 1 points 5 months ago (7 children)

I mean 95% of their customers probably don't care or even know what Recall is but...

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[–] jet@hackertalks.com 1 points 5 months ago (9 children)

Not really

For the retail market, most people just have phones not computers anymore. Microsoft has already lost The Battle of Windows phone.

For the Enterprise market none of this recent b******* is going to enterprise customers anyway, they would have group policies and volume licensing deals to avoid all the b*******.

For those poor retail customers who still run Windows, they suffer, but they're minor, not significant

[–] Iheartcheese@lemmy.world 1 points 5 months ago (2 children)

Bullshit

Just passing through and corrupting children.

[–] stoy@lemmy.zip 0 points 5 months ago (1 children)

O7

Thank you for your service!

[–] Iheartcheese@lemmy.world 1 points 5 months ago
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[–] Zachariah@lemmy.world 0 points 5 months ago
[–] 7U5K3N@lemmy.dbzer0.com 0 points 5 months ago
[–] brb@sh.itjust.works 0 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Why are you censoring yourself? Are you stupid?

[–] jet@hackertalks.com 0 points 5 months ago

Possibly. But I'm also definitely lazy, and my voice to text automatically censors. And I don't feel like changing it. So f*** it

[–] Lmaydev@programming.dev 0 points 5 months ago

For the majority of commercial users they literally don't give a fuck either. It's on techies that really care about his stuff sadly.

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

The average user is not even going to know this was a thing

[–] beaxingu@kbin.run 0 points 5 months ago

Microsoft should go further and further with this so that windows becomes worse so that less people use it.

[–] autotldr@lemmings.world 0 points 5 months ago

This is the best summary I could come up with:


As CEO Satya Nadella described it, Windows now has a photographic memory that uses AI to triage and index everything you've ever done on your computer, enabling you to semantically search for things you've seen using natural language.

Your favorite web browser, video editor, or music streaming app of choice could release an update that begins scraping data from Windows Recall and uploading it to its own backend.

Many have already assumed the worst; that Windows Recall will eventually be used as a means to sell data to advertisers and train AI models, and that if it's not happening today, it's only a matter of time.

It's a feature reserved exclusively for new PCs shipping under the Copilot+ umbrella, which means if you want to use it, you'll have to buy a new device with a neural processing unit (NPU) that can output 40 TOPS of power first.

But there's a very dark cloud hanging over this feature right now, and a lot of privacy conscious people are simply not going to be able to subscribe to the idea of Windows Recall in its current form.

I suspect this means we will see new features and capabilities added to Windows Recall over the coming months, along with updates to ensure the data it collects is secure on the device.


The original article contains 2,259 words, the summary contains 219 words. Saved 90%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!

[–] 58008@lemmy.world 0 points 5 months ago (16 children)

I wish Linux weren't completely fucking impenetrable for casual users.

[–] Gormadt@lemmy.blahaj.zone 0 points 5 months ago (21 children)

It's gotten a lot better over the years

When I first tried it (back in 2010) it was pretty rough all around but after trying it again recently due to the whole TPM requirement for Windows 11 I've found it to be really straight forward

Linux Mint is really user friendly and is what I've even put on my grandma's pc

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[–] Ghyste@sh.itjust.works 0 points 5 months ago (1 children)

They say this like anyone is going to do something...

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[–] rtxn@lemmy.world 0 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (17 children)

My dad is now pissed at both Microsoft and Adobe, and curious about Linux. If I can find a Lightroom alternative, he might actually switch.

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[–] sverit@lemmy.ml 0 points 5 months ago

Well, getting their OpenID Signing Key for Azure Active Directory stolen was magnitudes worse in my opinion.

https://www.cisa.gov/sites/default/files/2024-04/CSRB_Review_of_the_Summer_2023_MEO_Intrusion_Final_508c.pdf

[–] NoiseColor@startrek.website 0 points 5 months ago (5 children)

Lol! How incredibly detached from reality!

Nobody cares! Well a few people care that make a big fuss, but most people don't ever think about their os. I bet a pretty big percentage don't know what os they use and I bet more than half don't know what version of the os they are using.

Nobody cares!

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

This. Normal users give zero shit, they neither understand nor care about any of this. If they can use a cool feature they will. How many use Facebook again? What do they care about privacy? Exactly.

They lost trust from some niche <10 %, that's it, from which most use/want to use Linux anyway.

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

They don't care, but their nephew that has to fix the PC is it acts up cares, and when the nephew says he's not touching that thing with a 10 foot pole they'll consider that for their next purchase.

And if in the news there is an article that thanks to copilot they could identify the culprit in a crime, they'll look at any Windows version and their stroking material in a map on that drive a little different.

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