Remember Microsoft's Recall? The first implementation was never released and was met with strong criticism from privacy advocates and the infosec/security community. Guess what? Microsoft has doubled down, and its controversial Recall scraper is finally entering the public preview stage. If you care about privacy, please think twice before using this on your AI-enabled PCs (Snapdragon-powered Copilot+ PCs) https://blogs.windows.com/windows-insider/2024/11/22/previewing-recall-with-click-to-do-on-copilot-pcs-with-windows-insiders-in-the-dev-channel/
Recall takes a screenshot of a user's desktop every few seconds and then uses on-device AI models to allow a user to retrieve items and information that had previously been on their screen. This caused controversy, with experts warning that the feature could be a "disaster" for security and privacy. Yet, it is now rolling out. I guess there will be no hack or bugs that will leak this info on screen. Right? LOL.
Repeat after me: Snapdragon-based PCs (or laptops) are only safe with Linux or BSD operating systems. They are unsafe with Windows 11 and its Recall feature, even for gaming or other purposes.
@nixCraft #Recall & #Copilot are #YetAnotherReason why I'd rather buy a #RHEL, #SLES, #SLED, #OravleLinux AND #Solaris #subscription at the same time than ever touch #Windows11!
@nixCraft Wait, you have a choice about using it? At least that's an improvement I guess. I figured the best thing for now was to tell everyone not to buy a Copilot+ PC
@trantion It gets enabled every update tho and MS hope that you will forget about it ;) LOL
@nixCraft @trantion yes that's the trick. If it can do something dangerous, it IS dangerous, even if disabled or carefully tweaked. My second point is: everytime we tolerate a new feature, we allow it to become something ordinary. It's not a problem if something simply useless becomes the norm. It is a problem if it's not just useless but dangerous. That's what happened with food delivery.
@nixCraft can't it be disabled though? Like opt out? I wouldn't want it sifting through my files. Well, not so much of an issue for me, on a Mac right now, main computers are Linux but for work I do have a Windows machine so I guess its works problem, not mine.
@JaxxAI @nixCraft There will probably be an opt out to *use* the information, but presumably not for gathering it. Rationale: “Suppose you want to turn it on in the future, you’d want your historical information to be available.”
Oh, and the opt out will revert with every update of course, under the label “improving user experience”.
@nixCraft
ye ... sure
@nixCraft I find it really worrying that this breaks the assumption that there is no security risk showing sensitive information onscreen to a fully authorized user.
(Plus the computational inefficiency of taking screenshots and turning them back into text.)
@nixCraft Honestly, we've needed a tool like this for ages now, it's not like anyone's web browser has a "history" tab of some sort... oh, wait
@nixCraft when MS mentioned proudly it will be as safe as windows, I knew what to expect
@nixCraft there will be no opt-out because it will be opt-in.
In companies, employers can only deactivate it for their employees but not activate it remotely.
There appears to be an option to delete it entirely.
And access to the stored data is only granted using Hello.
@Erklaerbaer @nixCraft and then, one day, by an unfortunate error in a patch update the feature will be switched on.
@nixCraft Why? And what does 'unsafe' mean in the context of gaming?
@nixCraft why are they unsafe?
@evilworld @nixCraft because recall will doxx you. at some point it will collect some piece of information you do not want uploaded to Microsoft's cloud and there's no way to disable it.
@chirpbirb @evilworld @nixCraft there is no evidence yet, that the data gained with recall will be shared with MS. But my trust is as low as yours that I expect that too. The bigger threat is that these machines and users will become targets by criminals because there is much more to gain
@chirpbirb it’s not sent to microsoft’s cloud (at least there’s no evidence it does that) however, it’s stored in an insecure database that can be easily compromised by malware
@nixCraft With that said, I suspect they make pretty great Linux machines.
@nixCraft Does Recall require special hardware that Snapdragon brand computers have?
@Methylcobalamin @nixCraft Yes, Copilot+ PCs require a compatible neural processing unit (NPU) that was initially available with Snapdragon processors, but Intel and AMD are also developing compatible processors.
I am very wary of MS’s commitments to security and privacy to consider enabling the Recall feature. More optimistic Apple Intelligence will balance usability with security and privacy.
@nixCraft I have a sweet system76 rig which I play starfield while running an Oracle database
@nixCraft this made me switch to a Linux system
@nixCraft I honestly knew that they were not going to back down from this
@GnarlyBear yeah. they would only back down if everyone started switching to another operating system but unfortunately that’s very unlikely to happen
@nixCraft I'm sad they want to pound the AI drum so hard it has blinded them from making things users need. It is tragic the amount of users that can't easily switch from Windows because their needs aren't met by a different OS. I was lucky that I could switch to using only Linux, but for many it isn't so simple. Hopefully users can stay safe with this nightmare. I definitely haven't regretted moving away from Windows though.
@nixCraft The Windows operating system itself is a form of malware, perpetually infecting and compromising computers...
@nixCraft Remember: This is the company which stores your email passwords from outlook in their cloud unencrypted. Not only from ms accounts but also your gmail, gmx, hotmail, etc.
@nixCraft It gets worse when you realize that both Intel and AMD are trying to compete with Qualcomm on the AI compute front.
Eventually all laptops above a certain price point will become Copilot+ PCs (to the point that the branding will become unnecessary), and that price floor will only go lower. Windows is *actually* not a safe environment anymore regardless of hardware.
@PepVerbsNouns it hasn’t been a safe os regardless of hardware for a while. it started with windows 10’s built in telemetry and keylogging. it’s so bad that when i need to use windows i always do it in a virtual machine and modify windows to get rid of the spyware and bloat
@nixCraft The first thing I'll do is disable this thing. Thie thing is a huge liability, for Microsoft hoarding my data and 3rd party apps accessing snapshots.
@nixCraft i have to run Windows sometimes for work, so i run it in a docker container
https://github.com/dockur/windows
works a trick and allows me to sandbox
@beepcheck @nixCraft I am currently using @wimpy and friends' #quickemu but windows in a docker container seems intriguing. A bit of a compare and contrast may be helpful
@nixCraft It's not just Snapdragon PCs anymore. Both Intel Core Ultra 200-series (Arrow Lake and Lunar Lake) as well as some AMD Zen 4 and Zen 5 processors now come with NPUs that are expected to be Copilot+ rated sometime this month. (Microsoft is probably waiting on this to happen for the production launch.)
@nixCraft Yea ! I switched to #Fedora #Linux. What the hell is even #Microsoft ?
@nixCraft I love Recall. It was the final straw that caused me to permanently uninstall Windows and move to Linux full time!
It is prudent to just avoid Windows in the first place.
@nixCraft it sounds like this feature is only for the snapdragon PCs, am I understanding this correctly?