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.
Just think they might go from owning 98% of the market to 97% of the market. I am sure this is a nightmare for them.
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.
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.
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
I do have a Twitter account but for the life of me I can’t remember what the password is so I can’t actually see the responses, since apparently you need to sign in to see responses now, but if you do have Twitter you can see the responses here’s the link. https://x.com/jensimmons/status/1491064075987873792
Some nitter instances might work. This one did. Not a shitshow at all, especially as she didn’t say that “bug reports aren’t constructive feedback”
Everyone in my mentions saying Safari is the worst, it’s the new IE… Can you point to specific bugs & missing support that frustrate you, inhibit you making websites/apps. Bonus points for links to tickets. Specifics we can fix. Vague hate is honestly super counterproductive."
There’s plenty of bug reports in there and she’s behaving how I’d expect a developer to: by asking further questions and version use for stuff that should be fixed. Didn’t see any point where she lost her temper in any way
Don’t forget the fact they’re locked onto luxury hardware, and you can’t build your own flavor for it. Even worse is, notebook manufacturers copied them so much there’s less variations among them. I was looking for some “subnotebook” as a potential portable PC, but I had like a few options (many of which would have included AliExpress junk), but there’s an endless supply of same-looking 14-16" ones, that are thin (“real” portability according to techbros), lightweight, “desktop replacements”, and run at a constant 95°C.
Yeah, the main takeaway here is “Apple Bad”
The main takeaway of this article about Microsoft’s horrible decisions is “Apple bad”? OS flame wars really haven’t gotten less ridiculous in the past decades…
Apple is not blameless but they are a shit-ton better than Microsoft. I have to have M$ for a few work apps but I’m primarily MacOS for desktop and Linux for everything server-side. I avoid M$ as much as possible.
I agree. But everyone acts like Apple’s shit doesn’t stink.
TL;DR:
- Windows Recall, part of Microsoft’s new Copilot+ PC initiative, has sparked major privacy and security concerns.
- The feature uses AI to capture and store screen data locally, allowing users to search for past activities using natural language.
- Despite assurances that data is not uploaded to the cloud or used by Microsoft, user trust is lacking.
- Microsoft has a history of practices that have eroded user trust, including obtrusive ads, ignoring user preferences, and requiring Microsoft Accounts.
- Users are skeptical, fearing future misuse of the collected data for advertising or AI training.
- Windows Recall reportedly stores data unencrypted, making it vulnerable to access by third-party apps and potential malware.
- The open nature of Windows amplifies these risks, unlike more secure systems like iOS and Android.
- Users have compared Windows Recall to spyware, with many threatening to switch to other operating systems like Linux or Mac.
- Microsoft’s attempts to keep the development of Windows Recall secret did not help build trust.
- Windows Recall will only be available on new Copilot+ PCs, requiring specific hardware not present in existing PCs.
- Users will have the option to disable the feature, but there are concerns about it being enabled by default.
- Despite security issues, the feature is effective in helping users find lost or forgotten data.
- It could improve productivity if trust and security concerns are resolved.
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
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.
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.
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Respectfully, it’s not.
The user departures, and response to further enshittify, have driven their stock price into the ground.
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X is the one telling the number of X users. Do you really trust Melon to tell the truth?
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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.
And businesses don’t give a shit about their employees’ privacy
We do however care very deeply about IP and other sensitive data - in my field (digital cinema), microsoft have literally fucked themselves out of any company that wants a TPN certification
They do care about keeping their company secrets and proprietary info though. Recall could make corporate espionage a cake walk.
Ok fine, I’ll repeat it again:
You’re right - many consumers will likely forget about it and just use it anyways. But enterprise customers absolutely, categorically will not. Even with their damage control, this is still going to hurt them a lot. Moreover, it’s going to hurt hardware sales from Intel, AMD, and Qualcomm, all of which have dumped MASSIVE amounts of capital into this tech. This is going to slow the rollout of NN-optimized chip tiles, and that is going to directly hit their bottom line. Microsoft hurt themselves AND the three most important hardware partners they have.
This is status quo for every large corporation. Microsoft, Apple, Amazon, EVERY SOCIAL MEDIA PLATFORM, Roku… They all, ALL, push boundaries to see what they can get away with to not only sell you something, but also make you the thing they sell. Sometimes they’re bold enough to make it public what they’re doing, sometimes, it’s a leak that happens when people find out how little the company actually cares about it’s users (Apple, so many user data leaks).
My bigger concern is that almost every company now has it in their contracts/terms of services, that all users are not allowed to participate in a lawsuit, be it class action, or court case against them Most of them even have a maximum sue limit too! There’s a lot that have a rule that initial arbitration cannot have a lawyer, but that won’t be enforced.
Is that a valid and enforceable clause though, even if i clicked “i agree”?
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I’m using windows 11 and after hearing about recall and all the other shit they’ve done, I’ve finally decided to make the jump to Linux
So for atleast me, this was the final straw
I had dabbled in gaming on Linux but never made the jump. After reading about recall I spent a week making my choice on OS of choice ( and then I switched a week after :') ).
I’m fully on Linux now. Even if they fully back down from windows recall I dont need an OS that’s trying to sell me something based on whatever I do in it.
It was my final straw as well.
Edit: and it hasn’t really been bad either. The shader compilation after every gfx driver update is a bit annoying. That’s about it.
I’ll probably run into something at one point. Like some anti cheat that doesn’t work and is preventing me from playing the game.
Straw that broke the camel’s back? Every vertebra in that camel’s back has been smashed with a sledge hammer over the past 30 years.
Windows 95 was the last version I was excited about; Windows 98 SE was the last version of Windows I willingly purchased, and XP was the last one I willingly used. When they announced Win7, I downloaded Ubuntu 6.06, “Dapper Drake”. Since then, Windows has only existed on my computers as pirated, virtual machines.
I hated Windows from the day I saw the 3.1 floppies had no write tab (that tiny piece that allowed you to write the disk). My first though was “we’ve payed for this and they forbid us to write on them? Fuck MS”. It was the last original Windows in any PC at home. And I used DRDOS, so even worse (Windows 3.11 had a “bug” that made it crash if it ran on DRDOS).
Tape over the hole.
I know (and then too) but that’s not the point. It’s “you are not selling this to me”.
I don’t want to be the guy that always says Linux, but… …Linux
Yeah but there’s like 20 of them, and many are half-baked. How is a n00b to choose one?
Ubuntu is fine for all uses, and so are some of the others
Not sure about that. They try to get you to sign up for services, and they deliberately broke something with installing from certain file types.
It’s still perfectly functional and easy to use, just say no if they ask you to sign up to a service, if you come from windows you’ll ve surprised of how easy it is to dismiss those offers
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.
Even if the database remains local only forever, which I don’t believe for a second, the computer will eventually make hyperspecific requests for ads based on the spying.
You guys trusted MS before this???
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.
I mean 95% of their customers probably don’t care or even know what Recall is but…
95% of their customers are businesses, who no, they don’t understand that. But their IT department does.
Yeah this. Fed up with sensationalist headlines that are far from reality. Us Lemmy users have a better understanding of what’s going on but we shouldn’t be falling for this journalism as it’s nonsense.
A lot of people here seem to be missing the nuance.
Sure, it’s problematic for their consumer market share, but you’re right that that’ll probably be forgotten by the mostly tech-illiterate populace over time. But that’s not the problem.
Step 0 of MS’s plan for this should have been “make sure there is an absolutely bulletproof and ironclad way to disable that stuff completely for enterprise customers”. And they didn’t do that. So now, enterprise IT writ large is going to… you know… just not buy any of these devices. Which is absolutely their right.
But the really frustrating bit is that MS may have significantly harmed the rollout of ARM-based laptops (as well as x86 chips with beefy NN-optimized tiles) with this, and additionally done real, massive harm to Intel, AMD, and Qualcomm by doing so. All three of those manufacturers have gone to ENORMOUS lengths to roll this tech out, largely at MS’s behest. They’re all going to take this on the chin if the rollout goes poorly. And the rollout is already going poorly.
But MS thought they could Apple-handwave away the details. And they can’t, because a lot of people who understand the absurd security implications of continuous capture and OCR and plaintext storage of the OCR output. It’s not something you can handwave away. It’s entirely a non-starter in the context of maintaining organizational security (as well as personal data security, but we’ve already talked about why that’s a bit of a moot point with the general public). But enterprise IT largely does try to take their job seriously, and they are collectively calling MS’s bluff.
The problem for the long term is that MS has pretty much proven to the IT industry with this stunt that they can’t be trusted to make software that conforms to their needs. That’s a stain that isn’t going to go away any time soon. It might even be the spark that finally triggers enterprise to move away from MS as a primary client OS. After all, Linux is WAY easier to manage from a security perspective.
TL;DR: the issue is that MS has significantly damaged their reputation with this stunt. And you can’t buy reputation.
Edit:
The article has an update:
Update noon ET June 7, 2024: Microsoft has released a statement noting it is making three significant changes to how Recal works including making it opt-in during setup, requiring Windows Hello to enable Recall, proof of presence is now required to view your timeline, and search in Recall, and adding additional layers of data protection including “just in time” decryption protected by Windows Hello Enhanced Sign-in Security (ESS) so that snapshots will only be decrypted and accessible when the user authenticates.
It’s definitely a move in the right direction… but it also begs the question of why didn’t they do that in the first fucking place? Seriously, some heads are gonna roll over how badly this whole release was planned, and the very clear lack of due diligence.
