Microsoft's new Windows 11 Recall is a privacy nightmare

[becool773]

Microsoft's new Windows 11 Recall is a privacy nightmare

Microsoft's announcement of the new AI-powered Windows 11 Recall feature has sparked a lot of concern, with many thinking that it has created massive privacy risks and a new attack vector that threat actors can exploit to steal data.

www.bleepingcomputer.com

Of the little what I understood, this will keep on screenshoting your screen after xx minutes/seconds and will keep on saving it in an encrypted (ha ha) database on your computer. But we all know that they will upload this to themselves. Plus as per reddit keyloggers are not far away in the name of "improving customer experience and our services". They will initially give an option to disable it and then will make it compulsory. As it will keep on continuously saving screenshots to the drive so it will lead to more writes on the ssd. Your thoughts on this? Should one downgrade to 10 (it is less intrusive than 11) now or should one wait?

 

[rootyme]

I used to think that privacy focused people were paranoid over nothing. But man, this is too much! There is no end to the data hunger.

It's obvious where this is headed. AI in notepad, AI in MS Office, AI in browser, AI in File Explorer, AI in cursor. You'll need to download a third party plain text program for that not to have AI shoved in it.

 

[cassanovalite]

You'll need to download a third party plain text program for that not to have AI shoved in it.

I can see this becoming a reality honestly with the way its going, the only way AI would slow down was if something bad were to happen due to AI like how FTX happened to crypto.

 

[becool773]

I used to think that privacy focused people were paranoid over nothing. But man, this is too much! There is no end to the data hunger.

It's obvious where this is headed. AI in notepad, AI in MS Office, AI in browser, AI in File Explorer, AI in cursor. You'll need to download a third party plain text program for that not to have AI shoved in it.

Bro all this wont matter as they will keep on screenshoting and uploading everything that's on your screen to themselves

I can see this becoming a reality honestly with the way its going, the only way AI would slow down was if something bad were to happen due to AI like how FTX happened to crypto.

Slow AI down is impossible now. It already beat a human in a dogfight in a F-16.

 

[cassanovalite]

Slow AI down is impossible now. It already beat a human in a dogfight in a F-16.

Saying slowing AI down is impossible now is being super ignorant, It is possible given the circumstances. As I said if something terrible were to happen where the whole world is affected, watch it slow down as corporation/people don't want/trust AI work anymore.

 

[becool773]

Saying slowing AI down is impossible now is being super ignorant, It is possible given the circumstances. As I said if something terrible were to happen where the whole world is affected, watch it slow down as corporation/people don't want/trust AI work anymore.

What circumstances do you have in mind? My friend AI is not an invention, its a discovery. We have only uncovered the tip of the iceberg. There is no slowling done. I guess "it" has already gone through the whole TE just to learn.

 

[altair21]

folks, I have said it multiple times and I'll say it again, look into debloated windows, it's windows with all of Microsoft's telemetry stripped out and it's awesome

 

[Sumi]

folks, I have said it multiple times and I'll say it again, look into debloated windows, it's windows with all of Microsoft's telemetry stripped out and it's awesome

Adding to this, I found about W11 Enterprise when I was looking to upgrade as W10 was heading the W7 treatment and it's honestly the best compromise between straight up LTSC (W11 LTSC is now available if you want to go that route) or Win11 Home/Pro. It's a mix of Pro and Education versions with minimal bloatware, only necessary updates/choosing updates and added benefits by setting telemetry to 0 (zero).

 

[altair21]

Adding to this, I found about W11 Enterprise when I was looking to upgrade as W10 was heading the W7 treatment and it's honestly the best compromise between straight up LTSC (W11 LTSC is now available if you want to go that route) or Win11 Home/Pro. It's a mix of Pro and Education versions with minimal bloatware, only necessary updates/choosing updates and added benefits by setting telemetry to 0 (zero).

don't we need to pay up foe enterprise? or will MAS work on it?

 

[ibose]

W11 LTSC

To be more specific, Win11 IoT LTSC is expected to be the best option, but it has just started rolling out -

Win 11 IoT Enterprise LTSC arrives

https://www.tomshardware.com/software/windows/windows-11-ltsc-2024-arrives-making-tpm-and-secure-boot-optional-lower-storage-requirements-too Finally and, hopefully, good news from M$

techenclave.com

don't we need to pay up foe enterprise? or will MAS work on it?

Yes to the first and ahem ...

 

[rootyme]

I guess "it" has already gone through the whole TE just to learn.

Your guess is correct. "It" knows everything about TE since its inception.

 

[desiibond]

ROFLMAO at all this mass hysteria (Twitter, Threads, WhatsApp universities, reddit and what not) that MS will take your screenshots and use it though they are saying that the data is not sent to their servers.

****If they really wanted your data, they would have enabled sync from your laptop to their DC quietly. They don't have to wait to launch a feature to see what your are doing.****

So, please stop over-reacting. If you are not interested to use it, disable it. It is that simple.

PS: The people who make the most noise about privacy are those who never have a need to use the product/feature.

 

[altair21]

ROFLMAO at all this mass hysteria (Twitter, Threads, WhatsApp universities, reddit and what not) that MS will take your screenshots and use it though they are saying that the data is not sent to their servers.

****If they really wanted your data, they would have enabled sync from your laptop to their DC quietly. They don't have to wait to launch a feature to see what your are doing.****

So, please stop over-reacting. If you are not interested to use it, disable it. It is that simple.

that's the thing, shit like this should be an opt-in and NOT an opt-out. And this is such an asinine view that if they had wanted your data, they would have enabled it silently, that would caused a shitstorm of massive proportions when and yes when it would have been discovered

PS: The people who make the most noise about privacy are those who never have a need to use the product/feature.

again, its because of peeps who make the loudest noise that we have open source privacy focused stuff available and why people are getting more and more aware of the implications of big corpo privacy policies, more noise is always good, these companies would never change until we, the consumers force them to

 

[rootyme]

ROFLMAO at all this mass hysteria (Twitter, Threads, WhatsApp universities, reddit and what not) that MS will take your screenshots and use it though they are saying that the data is not sent to their servers.

****If they really wanted your data, they would have enabled sync from your laptop to their DC quietly. They don't have to wait to launch a feature to see what your are doing.****

The psychological importance of such contrasting worldviews is huge, in a positive way. This post gives off the vibe that the entire pro privacy movement is a complete farce/facade. I like it. Poor WhatsApp is always at the receiving end though.

At the same time, I must remind that if Microsoft actually pulled off a quiet stunt like that, they'd be in real trouble. Look at Avast for example:

Privacy protecting software found harvesting and selling user data, parent fined by Regulatory

I am not sure if I am supposed to laugh or cry at this but Avast has pulled off the unthinkable. https://www.ghacks.net/2024/02/26/avast-has-been-fined-by-the-ftc-for-using-its-privacy-software-to-harvest-and-sell-user-data/ Avast owns AVG, Avira, and Norton. It also owns CCleaner, a browser...

techenclave.com

The article posted on the OP is from a IT Security blog, so I don't think this is just hysteria. This "feature" may indeed cause trouble because:

Microsoft admits that the feature performs no content moderation, meaning it will gobble up anything it sees, including passwords in a password manager or your account numbers on your banking website.

Or if you are in Word, writing a confidential agreement, a screenshot of that content will be created, too. If you have a single PC and share it with others, then you may want to be careful about what pictures or videos you look at, as, guess what, those will be recorded as well.

Yes, you can block apps from being screenshotted by this feature, but most people will just let it run without mucking around with the feature's settings.

All of this information is now stored in Windows 11's semantic index and easily searchable by anyone with access to your PC, whether authorized or not.

If a threat actor or malware compromised your device, all of this data will already be decrypted by Bitlocker, making it accessible to the hacker.

For example, a threat actor or malware could simply steal a Recall database and upload it to their own servers for analysis. This information could then be used to extort users or potentially breach user's accounts if credentials were exposed.

How the new Microsoft Recall feature fundamentally undermines Windows security

Microsoft ship a feature taking constant screenshots of PCs by design.

doublepulsar.com

This thread was not just about just "data", no. This is about having having unwanted features shoved left and right. Like copilot in place of show desktop. Co pilot in place of the browser hamburger menu. A degraded start and taskbar experience. All that.

that's the thing, shit like this should be an opt-in and NOT an opt-out. And this is such an asinine view that if they had wanted your data, they would have enabled it silently, that would caused a shitstorm of massive proportions when and yes when it would have been discovered

Exactly. One has to go out of his/her way to disable tons of stuff that are forced and can sometimes be auto-enabled with reboots and/or updates. There is a difference between seeking help when needed and being forced help above and beyond without request. Most don't want the latter and that's where this hysteria stems from. If everything were opt-in this wouldn't be any big deal.

PS: The people who make the most noise about privacy are those who never have a need to use the product/feature.

The world was functioning just alright before this feature drop and will continue to do so regardless of its existence. As @altair21 correctly said:

again, its because of peeps who make the loudest noise that we have open source privacy focused stuff available and why people are getting more and more aware of the implications of big corpo privacy policies, more noise is always good, these companies would never change until we, the consumers force them to

 

[variablevector]

ROFLMAO at all this mass hysteria (Twitter, Threads, WhatsApp universities, reddit and what not) that MS will take your screenshots and use it though they are saying that the data is not sent to their servers.

****If they really wanted your data, they would have enabled sync from your laptop to their DC quietly. They don't have to wait to launch a feature to see what your are doing.****

So, please stop over-reacting. If you are not interested to use it, disable it. It is that simple.

PS: The people who make the most noise about privacy are those who never have a need to use the product/feature.

Not replying to this post in particular. But the fact that this is actually a popular opinion and there are many people who agree with this view walking around is depressing. The various arguments I've seen from them boil down to,

1) We're already being surveilled by NSA/CIA/other state intelligence agencies anyway. Who cares?
2) This is $MEGA_CORP we're talking about. If they wanted our data, they would already have it.
3) I have nothing to hide and therefore have no problems with it. The thought of other people having privacy scares me. Anyone with an objection to losing their "right" to privacy must be a criminal.

...Okay? Do you actually believe Arg #1 and Arg #2? If you believe in hyper-competent intelligence agencies that have already broken end-to-end encryption and mega corporations who never have to trickle truth, slippery slope and gaslight their way into gaining more access to our data because otherwise it would cause an uproar from their customers, then I have nothing left to say to you. Arg #3 is a non-starter because we don't share the same values. It's like trying to argue with a cannibal who values eating their relatives. How do you convince them that roasting their uncle over a fire is, in fact, a bad thing?

You can try telling anti-privacy advocates that one day they may be in a criminal trial where the government orders Microsoft to release all the screenshots of their desktop on X day and some old judge has to make a determination if they committed a crime based on that, but are they smart enough to intuit why that is such a bad idea? Probably not.

Imagine giving away all your digital privacy for absolutely nothing in return. It's sad. At least try and get paid for it.

 

[altair21]

You can try telling anti-privacy advocates that one day they may be in a criminal trial where the government orders Microsoft to release all the screenshots of their desktop on X day and some old judge has to make a determination if they committed a crime based on that, but are they smart enough to intuit why that is such a bad idea? Probably not.

Imagine giving away all your digital privacy for absolutely nothing in return. It's sad. At least try and get paid for it.

btw this has already happened, this is Louis Rossman's video explaining how car logs were used to sentence a woman to jail, (relevant article in question), some peeps on this forum believe Louis to be a shill but he has done way more against anti-consumer practices than most people. it's always a slippery slope down consumer rights, be it Apple with their bullshit anti consumer practices or Hp with them not allowing non OEM cartridges and blocking legit cartridge from working, John Deere with their anti-repair stance or Mercedes/BMW with their subscription bullshit. It always begins with just a little bit and corpos judging just how much we can take before shoving more bullshit down our throats and its always because of idiots like us who allow them to get away with it

 

[becool773]

folks, I have said it multiple times and I'll say it again, look into debloated windows, it's windows with all of Microsoft's telemetry stripped out and it's awesome

Can you please share more details about it? And as its debloated and maybe from a third party source so is it fully trutable?
Are you talking about something like this https://ameliorated.io/

+ @guest_999 @nRiTeCh your views on this please

Your guess is correct. "It" knows everything about TE since its inception.

No no I meant that it is harvesting everything from TE like its doing from reddit etc. The only difference is that reddit is getting paid for it.

ROFLMAO at all this mass hysteria (Twitter, Threads, WhatsApp universities, reddit and what not) that MS will take your screenshots and use it though they are saying that the data is not sent to their servers.

****If they really wanted your data, they would have enabled sync from your laptop to their DC quietly. They don't have to wait to launch a feature to see what your are doing.****

So, please stop over-reacting. If you are not interested to use it, disable it. It is that simple.

PS: The people who make the most noise about privacy are those who never have a need to use the product/feature.

You should know that they will reenable it in the next update and will most likely make it impossible to disable it.

PS: Don't know why people have a problem if others are discussing about a certain topic.

 

[guest_999]

your views on this please

I use enterprise version of windows which has much better & configurable privacy & security options but I don't trust any pre-built debloated windows or any script unless I can analyse it myself to see what exactly it does not to mention such scripts always break something in windows & depending on your luck those broken things may or may not cause issues in future. I doubt such feature will be allowed/introduced in Enterprise versions of windows due to obvious security/privacy concerns in corporate environment.

 

[becool773]

I use enterprise version of windows which has much better & configurable privacy & security options but I don't trust any pre-built debloated windows or any script unless I can analyse it myself to see what exactly it does not to mention such scripts always break something in windows & depending on your luck those broken things may or may not cause issues in future. I doubt such feature will be allowed/introduced in Enterprise versions of windows due to obvious security/privacy concerns in corporate environment.

How much expensive is that enterprise version than a home version and what major additional features/privacy options does it have over a home version?

 

[guest_999]

How much expensive is that enterprise version than a home version and what major additional features/privacy options does it have over a home version?

Hint, enterprise version is not available for purchase by regular customer so you can guess. Enterprise version is meant to be used in business/corporate environment so obviously it will have more configurable privacy & security options. For starters it has "minimum telemetry mode" & also group policy editor both missing in home version.