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When I first heard about Recall, I immediately buried my face in my hands.
If you haven’t read about it yet,Recall is an AI feature coming to Windows 11Copilot+ PCs.
If anyone other than you gets access to that Recall data, it could be disastrous.
What’s the problem with Windows Recall?
Well, if you use Recall, you won’t have to imagine.
you’re free to increase the storage allocation for Recall in your PC configs.
Old snapshots will be deleted once you use your allocated storage, allowing new ones to be stored."
This is worse than keylogging!
This is worse than keylogging!
Will this only work onMicrosoft Edge, or will it integrate with Chrome and Firefox too?
But that’s just the tip of the iceberg.
It will not hide information such as passwords or financial account numbers.
I think this is a bad idea.
The decision should be made by the individual, and not by Windows.
Having it immediately active just means that uninformed people may not be able to act upon this.
In my eyes, it’s akin to cookie tracking it can be just as invasive.
All of this makes me wonder whether it may hit a snag withconsent under GDPR.
Is Microsoft making Recall secure?
In defense of Microsoft, I’d like it to be known that there was anattemptto make it secure.
I don’t think it was a very good one, but there was an attempt.
The omission of Windows Home users is horrifying.
If thisisthe case, it leaves everyday people vulnerable if their devices are compromised.
We’ve already seen thatBitLocker can be cracked.
This means that, for now, Microsoft isn’t peeking behind the curtain.
But that doesn’t guarantee that’ll be the case forever.
For now, the push seems to be to persuade people to upgrade their OS.
“Screenshots are only available to the person whose profile was used to sign in to the gadget.
If two people share a unit with different profiles they will not be able to access each others screenshots.
If they use the same profile to sign-in to the machine then they will share a screenshot history.
Otherwise, Recall screenshots are not available to other users or accessed by other applications or services.”
What are the security risks with Recall?
You’re probably thinking “so what?”
As the saying goes “an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.”
You’re better off not having this stuff stored on your machine in the first place.
I don’t like the idea of anything tracking what we do.
Butthis… this is something else.
There is so much opportunity for misuse with this feature.
Security cannot be understated.
Privacy cannot be bolted on.
Taking screenshots of my gear from the second I activate my gear shouldnotbe a default option.
Put the user in control of their privacy, and put the decision in their hands.
All of this just pushes me into the privacy-loving flippers ofLinux.
