Technology

I don't think this will bury MS because they can easily market this to enterprise clients ( if they haven't already ). Recall is a particularly useful tool for any employer that wants to keep track of everything employees do, especially in an age of WFH. They probably fogired they can take the PR hit from users concerned about privacy and move on unaffected.

It's also important to remember that Microsoft has no monetary incentive to force people to use Windows Recall.

With that in mind, there would be no reason for Microsoft to automatically enable Windows Recall in an update down the line. If it does happen, the user will be able to instantly tell thanks to that that visual indicator and turn it off again.

This article is nothing but propaganda. There is huge monetary incentive to force people to use Windows Recall and collect their data, and Microsoft routinely uses Windows Update to enable data collection. They began that practice years ago on Windows 7. It's a ridiculously simple matter for MS to disable the visual indicator and force This Week's Plan on their users to monetize their data.

Windows Central pretends to be critical of plans to enable a feature that can be made into malware by Microsoft in a couple of minutes, but then back peddles and says it can't be done (utter BS) and if it could be, it wouldn't be that bad.

Where are at point no where new features added to something (phone, OS, website, etc) are only to further monetize the user while providing a minimal benefit.

People are losing trust with technology providers.

If this technology existed back in Windows 95 days people, would have gone wild for it.

Why is Lemmy showing me news from the 00's?

Seen gamers install things worse then Recall. So to them they won't care. Unless it hurts their latency or fps.

The article was revised with a PR release from Microsoft saying they'll make the feature opt-in.

Let's of course not forget that things like upgrades to Windows 11, and use of an MS Account instead of local account, were opt-in...until they weren't. Require them to sign a contractual agreement that this feature will remain opt-in forever.

Linux ftw!

It's the 1, 2, 3, 4 punch of

"Haha windows 10 EOL is soon and no your computer cannot upgrade 😏"

Followed by the

"We're thinking about.. no? Okay well anyways, we're gonna shove ads into the UX, even after backpedaling after backlash"

Then the

"Listen the security situation is p bad and we're not too sure what to do about it. Lots of internal accts have been compromised. Probably yours too, we don't really know. Shhh, we got big AI news soon."

And lastly the

"Unveiling, the biggest security nightmare tool in the history of connected devices. From the writers of Total Recall and the masterminds behind Ads in your OS comes: Recall!"

I don't care what windows does to rectify this. My parents next machines are either Linux or Chromebooks.

If windows 12 isn't FOSS, Microsoft can pound sand.

I know it's WindowsCentral but the article has some pretty naive takes. Given the propensity of threat actors to target Windows due to its market share it's impossible to not see a system that records user activity as a huge treasure trove for both malware and hackers.

It also doesn't mention that Microsoft claimed that it would be impossible to exfiltrate Recall data and of course researchers found it not only possible but trivial, with the data lacking even basic protections. Assurances that there are mechanisms to prevent Recall from secretly monitoring you mean nothing when prior assurances about safety have been found to be paper thin at best.

Further it ignores that telemetry gathered by Windows has dramatically increased in the last several years with methods to disable it being eliminated or undone by OS updates. Microsoft is hungry for user data and it would be absurdly naive to think that Recall won't be a tool they use to gain more of it. If not now, then definitely later.

The author does point out that Recall has been weirdly under wraps, avoiding the usual test bed for new feature rollout. Microsoft has been acting shady about the feature and then the feature itself does shady things (like record PII, credit card data, etc.), of course users are going to think the worst. At this point it's a survival tactic.

Microsoft doesn't have trust issues because of bad PR or a few missteps. Microsoft has trust issues because they have violated user trust repeatedly for decades. They have done nothing to make users feel like they care at all about keeping Windows secure and safe and they clearly have no regard for user privacy. This only question is whether this backlash will do anything to make Microsoft reconsider the way it treats its users. I predict they will learn all the wrong lessons from this.