Microsoft will begin sending a revised version of its controversial Recall feature to Windows Insider PCs beginning in October, according to an update published today to the company’s original blog post about the Recall controversy. The company didn’t elaborate further on specific changes it’s making to Recall beyond what it already announced in June.
For those unfamiliar, Recall is a Windows service that runs in the background on compatible PCs, continuously taking screenshots of user activity, scanning those screenshots with optical character recognition (OCR), and saving the OCR text and the screenshots to a giant searchable database on your PC. The goal, according to Microsoft, is to help users retrace their steps and dig up information about things they had used their PCs to find or do in the past.
The problem was that other users on the same PC, or attackers with physical or remote access to your PC, could easily access, view, and export those screenshots and the OCR database since none of the information was encrypted at rest or protected in any substantive way.
Among the changes Microsoft has said it will make: The database will be encrypted at rest and will require authentication (and periodic reauthentication) with Windows Hello before users will be allowed to access it. The feature will also be off by default, whereas the original plan was to turn it on by default and make users go into Settings to turn it off.
They always keep trying again until we forget about it and it sticks forever
I saw a comment back when they announced they were “canceling” it, saying the same thing. It seems they were right. Microsoft will do anything to get their grubby hands on as much user data as possible; of course they’re not going to give up that easily.
Remember how Microsoft went to court way back in the day over monopolistic practices? Yeah whatever happened to that…
That’s the strategy, yes
“The feature will also be off by default, whereas the original plan was to turn it on by default and make users go into Settings to turn it off.”
So it can be turned on again whenever another update comes.
Whoops, somehow it got turned on again 🤷♂️
Unless they intend on rolling this into home only there will have to be a policy to allow you to disable it from a corporate standpoint.
Yeah, like OneDrive which was supposed to be off by default, Skype which was supposed to be off by default. They love their “Off by defaults” , because for the first few updates they’re off and then suddenly during a major update you have 20 new processes running because they all have services that run even if the program’s off
For those who want to escape this bullshit, Linux welcomed you with open arms and gives you control of your PC. Microsoft doesn’t respect you, ditch them and move to something that will.
Microsoft should permanently recall the Recall feature.
The headlines write themselves.
None of these companies invent things for the user anymore. It’s all tracking.
Guys guys, I think you’re exaggerating a bit with this feature.
I mean, what’s so bad in it to be hated like this?
Whatever is so wrong in giving a company known for their awful privacy respect and incredibly high data collection they do on the computes a history of literally everything you do on your pc, key presses included?
It’s encrypted! They surely won’t be able to do anything with it, right?
…
Right???
Edit: typo
Last I knew it wasn’t even encrypted, unless they realized how stupid that was
So do they like plan to do something with the massive amount of hospitals using Windows?
Like it seems to me that scraping PHI might be a bad idea
Yes. They plan that all the HIPAA lawsuits they’ll fight off will cost less than all the money they’ll make from selling everyone’s private data
In case anyone has to use Windows for certain things like I do,
HERE is a link that will provide ways to turn off Windows bullshit until you can either move over to Linux full time, or at least make your Windows partition slightly better.
Dude nice
I stupid. Is there somewhere that says everything this does?
The solution: https://www.debian.org/
Mint is always an option too.
Mint is my go to suggestion for new people switching over.
Absolutely. I don’t use it myself, but it’s where I started and it’s what I suggest.
or better, MX 23 :)
Googling this brings up a motorcycle driving school.
MX Linux is a great distro
Haven’t tried it myself, but it looks interesting. I figure that GNOME and KDE are probably more comfortable than XFCE for general users and gamers, respectively.
I don’t game so I’m using Xfce only, I love it
I game and I am using XFCE only, GNOME feels really bad for me and KDE I don’t want to tinker with.
Or, please consider Devuan as well, to ensure there are distros without hard dependencies on systemd, an expansive attempt to cement IBM/RedHat’s control over the direction of Linux through foundational changes to the init, filesystem, login, homedir, and other components…
Please don’t bother replying to change my mind… never gonna like systemd no matter what. If it works for you, fine. Some of us still find it wholly unnecessary.
I specifically pointed out Debian instead of Fedora because of my discomfort with what happened to CentOS, even though Fedora comes with more out-of-the-box for desktop-users/gamers.
Linux has already switched to systemd, whether you like it or not. 99.9% of new users will only ever learn systemd, if they even learn what an init system is at all.
Debian switched to systemd in 2013, and IBM was not involved with systemd before 2019. Poettering works for Microsoft, not IBM.
The changes to init were necessary. The init scripts were legacy bloat, even in 2013. Furthermore, the work from the systemd project on creating separate daemons for other parts of the OS have brought a lot of new features and innovation to Linux.
I’m a fan of powerful assistive solutions, but I’m not comfortable with something closed source and proprietary running this intimately.
It’s like Microsoft doesn’t want people to upgrade to Windows 11.
You will be assimilated.
No matter what, and at the cost of absolutely everything else, the line must go up. In no way, shape, or form does anything else matter. The line. Must. Go. Up.
I’ll start by saying my username is quite true, but, they’re gonna have to send the data back to microsoft, so couldn’t someone block the ports they use?
Ports? Hah, they’ll send it straight through https if they want. To the base Microsoft domain so you can’t block without basically disconnecting your install. Objectively that’s what any security conscious user should do.
fair enough, just thought I’d ask smarter people.
Besides it might spoil the relationship with your local NSA agent.
No they won’t (or at least they shouldn’t), it’s meant to be local
So they fixed the major issues that people were complaining about. Let’s see if people therefore stop complaining.
“They put more spyware in your OS but it’s not turned on yet, stop complaining.”
They fixed the most egregious oversights.
People still don’t like the fact that there’s built in functionality to so egregiously spy on your users.
It’s Microsoft, there’s always something to complain about.
Not much incentive for them to try to satisfy the complainers, then.
They don’t need to satisfy the complainers, since they wouldn’t be paying for Windows anyways. They need to satisfy their corporate partners who will be paying Microsoft for Pro licenses and yearly Office 365 subscriptions.
Is it not opt I’m automatically this time?
Nope, it’s disabled by default.
Sir, this is a Wendy’s.
