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.
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
Well find out in 10 years that that wasn’t true and that it did capture data when the icon wasn’t present whoopsies.
If chkCaptureData.checked then recall() bigNotify() Else recall() End
This icon cannot be hidden or moved.
Or what? Your computer will take out a club and beat you to death?
You can’t convince me someone couldn’t do it with a simple registry edit, or even just replace the icon with something else by swapping an icon file somewhere in Windows/
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.
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.
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…
I was making a sarcastic response to the comment above mine and its chain, which devolved mindlessly into “Apple bad” as things tend to when Apple is mentioned.
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.
Seems the consensus is that telemetry started with Win7, but I swear I remember privacy people freaking out about Win95 or 98 sending system specs or something back with out telling the user. It’s been a slow boil for a long time.
Yeah I think 7 was when it was a big blip on the radar. But 100% they had to start laying that foundation beforehand, so I wouldn’t be surprised if it was either always there or started making its way in 98.
95 was relatively groundbreaking and a part of me thinks the PC was so new they hadn’t thought of it yet or if it was even possible given the nature of internet, but you can’t put anything past the marketing guys that would probably love to know what colour your shit is.
Yes & No.
From what I remember from that time it wasn’t really a lot of people going on about privacy at that time. We were more concerned with how they just grabbed the BSD networking stack without saying anything about it.
There were a few things w/rt activation that people were pissed about. That was more towards the XP era though.
Though maybe someone else remembers it differently than I do since I wasn’t paying attention to privacy at that point and I don’t remember seeing anything about it in PCMAG or G4
I vaguely remember something from TechTV or Slashdot. Searches only turn up more recent discussions though. The old stories are getting buried by the more recent shit going on.
Don’t worry a quick google search will tell us to use a non toxic glue mixed with vanta black to keep privacy intact
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I’ve always trusted them to do what they’re great at… which is get a product nearly 100% perfect, then back it up about 20%, and polish it off by shooting themselves in the foot.
Which I’ve always found it insane that EVERY product they ship is like that. The only exceptions (IMHO) to that were Office, DOS5, Win7, (Maybe XP)
My dad is now pissed at both Microsoft and Adobe, and curious about Linux. If I can find a Lightroom alternative, he might actually switch.
I figured on my gaming and VR rig that I’d begrudgingly upgrade it to W11 when W10 stopped receiving security updates and support but at this point the recall feature (which will be used to train LLMs regardless of what Microsoft promises or guarantees) has ensured that I never install that kind of spyware as an operating system.
I’d rather spend forever troubleshooting and getting my Valve Index to work with Ubuntu than deal with a giant backdoor.
I wouldn’t go for Ubuntu. They are also run by a corporation that has done problematic things with the project. It also just doesn’t work that well anymore. Better off going for something Debian or Fedora based, or even an Ubuntu derivative like Pop OS.
Isn’t Ubuntu Debian based? Or is that no longer the case? I haven’t used it for about a decade.
It’s Debian-based, but Canonical has been really Microsofty about its development. They now have Snap as a universal packaging format, and have mandated that all official Ubuntu flavors (so X/K/Lubuntu and others, but not derivatives like Mint) must include Snap, and must not include Flatpak in the default installation. They’ve also fucked with APT where installing certain packages, like Firefox, would first install Snap and then the application’s Snap package, without even telling the user. They’ve had some controversy with Amazon ads in the search results, and advertising Ubuntu Pro in the fucking terminal. The default GNOME desktop also has a ton of issues.
I, and many others, recommend against Ubuntu. Linux Mint is the most commonly recommended “just works” distro. That being said, switching to Ubuntu, if able, is still preferable to staying on Windows.
I agree most of this is fucked up, though I don’t know what search results you mean. Also, I always find it funny that people refer to the Ubuntu pro thing as “ads”. Yes it technically is, but it is a fuck ton less shitty than what we’ve come to know as ads in literally every other context. It’s literally a couple lines of text about packages you can get premium updates and support for
IIRC: about decade ago Ubuntu (still with its own Unity DE) processed system search in a way it shoveled amazon ads to users in first places. Or something lime that.
The Unity desktop’s search would display Amazon ads based on the query. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ubuntu#Conformity_with_European_data_privacy_law
It’s like the “nazi bar” anecdote. It always starts small. You let in a bit of ads, a bit of self-promotion, then the revenue reaches a plateau. You let in a little more ads, maybe a pop-up saying that you could be more secure. Then a few years later you have a Recall situation. If you let one nazi drink at your bar, he’ll bring his friends, and you’ll be running a nazi bar.
I don’t trust Canonical to act with integrity.
It’s debian-based, but such an outlier from the rest of the linux ecosystem that it might as well be its own beast.
Yes, it is, although there are many differences between both.
Many suggest Linux Mint (one of the best regarded beginner distro) as well, which has two versions, one based on Ubuntu and the other on Debian.
So, the three are like Debian’s most popular branch.
Yes, always has been to my knowledge
Pop os is fantastic
It varies. I struggle with its interface personally. I also had to force it to switch to Wayland to get some things working reliably. The hybrid graphics mode has issues too using the GPU when it doesn’t need to. Other than that it works reasonably well out of the box, though you still occasionally have to deal with headaches from apt. A lot of the issues will hopefully be fixed when the cosmic desktop is ready. Some more can be fixed if they end up going immutable, which I believe they are working on right now. The Ubuntu version is also kinda old.
Personally I would rather be on NixOS or Fedora right now, or UBlue’s Aurora. I am probably not a good candidate to be running something like Pop OS though. I am too experienced and my needs and wants are too complex for the poor thing.
I am sure you’re right about at least most of this but I will say my experience hasn’t been very troublesome. Other than a driver issue I had after an update 2 years ago, I haven’t had much trouble. Since I switched to an amd GPU especially, since gaming is much smoother. I had a lot worse issues when I used Elementary OS. Stuff broke a ton. For example, I had a weird graphical issue in Firefox for months.
Elementary OS probably isn’t what I want either.
Are you talking about a desktop? I am on a laptop with Intel iGPU and Nvidia dGPU. The battery life in Windows isn’t great, but it actually seems worse in Pop OS. I did actually catching it using the dGPU when it shouldn’t be. Obviously Nvidia doesn’t help things, and I am glad it works as well as it does. Still it’s kind of sad. I might buy a second laptop just so I can have battery life that isn’t horrible.
Cosmic desktop from my understanding will have a better implementation of the hybrid graphics mode to stop this nonsense.
Yeah, desktops. I do think though that the Intel/Nvidia combo you have makes Linux in general a bit tougher than any setup more Linux friendly than that.
Very common setup sadly, actually the second laptop I have had like this. I can’t imagine AMD + Nvidia is much better though, as Intel graphics has great support on Linux. KDE was probably a better bet, and I would have to change distro to get KDE 6.
I would also suggest not Ubuntu, and instead say you should give Bazzite a try. They are specifically interested in gaming with Steam (they even have a spin for running on Steam Deck). They might have already put in the work troubleshooting the distro with your VR gear.
better get W10 LTSC in VM and use it until EOL and beyond, it’ll be more privacy friendly this way
You could try win 10 iot ltsc 2021 out. It gets security support until 2032.
All I want from an Os is to launch my programs of choice and not suck up my battery running unnecessary junk I couldn’t care less about.
The worst part is that Windows can do that, but Microsoft insists on enshittifying it. Like Windows 11 isn’t that terrible if it wasn’t for all of the data collection and advertisements and other shit.
I miss the Windows 7 days where you could download a stripped down ISO that was just the OS. It launched your programs of choice and didn’t suck up your battery running unnecessary junk.
Last week, I went to a friend’s house and asked to use her computer, which is still a core 2 duo with 2gb of ram and an hdd, running win7. I was a bit surprised to see her family having it as their only computer, but more surprised to see how fast it was. I expected to have the most laggish experience of my life, but it was… smooth. I’ve used machines with much modern low end cpus, more ram and ssds that performed much worse than that on win10. The enshittification is real.
Yup. I can say for sure that SSDs were certainly a game changer, but now we have systems with like 10x the processing power that operate at the same speeds because the power has been spent on poorly optimized code and bloatware.
Sigh… I’m going to have to start fucking around with Linux, aren’t I?
Yeah, the signs are starting to manifest. You will embrace the penguin at some point to get what you desire.
I’m telling everyone I know it’s time to move to Linux, or worst case Mac.
I have down-voted this because in a worst case scenario, they should move to a less appealing version of Linux, like Arch
(waiting for my down-votes)
I’m telling everyone I know
Vegan, European, CrossFit, Linux, born again
Seeing “European” is all you need to know this is rage bait
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Helping people to prevent their privacy from being completely screwed isn’t the same as feeling superior and smug about one’s choices, lifestyle, or where one lives. The sooner people understand the difference, the better.
But sure.
I also use Arch, btw…got any “witty” response to it?
I don’t know what this post means… but I want to learn.
Are you Vegan and moved to Europe and now do CrossFit?
That actually sounds like fun.
Especially the linux part.
Did you flee from a country that was awful and move to somewhere in Europe?
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).
I love it when Apple pushes advertising that touts their focus on privacy… when in reality, they’re breaching user privacy in all the ways that every other company does.
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”?
It should be illegal to include unenforceable clauses in any TOS or contract since it deceitfully implies it means something.
Should be, yes. I’m pretty sure it’s not in the US though. It’s pretty common here.
No.
Sorry, this may be unpopular, but software license click-through agreements are enforceable.
Source: I’m not a lawyer, but worked in a software contracts office with lawyers, so some of it ruined off. Essentially your legal options are, use the software according to the license agreement, or don’t use the software.
A third option would be, I guess, use open source software so you don’t deal with that bullshit.
Edit: Part of it is wrapped up in the Uniform Commercial Code, which is a whole bundle of standard laws which is quite complex. Basically you pays your money, and you get a thing, but there are all sports of knobs and levers to handle every contingency. You can nope out of the transaction, but you don’t get the thing.
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Maybe?
Again, I’m not a lawyer, but I’ve read a lot of EULAs.
However, to challenge that, your have to sue Microsoft, against their team of super-lawyers, the best that Microsoft could buy. And you’d have to do it in the jurisdiction started in the license agreement, which is undoubtedly friendly to Microsoft. And you’d have to have some sort of standing, meaning you have suffered some actual damage from the thing you arguing against, and that you want remedied. So you sue for damages, but it can only be for the amount that you were actually damaged, which is problematic - especially for free Microsoft software. But for paid software, I’m sure there’s a return/refund clause which would make you whole.
And you are paying your own lawyer to Microsoft, right? How long do you plan to sue Microsoft? I guarantee they have deeper pockets than you, and can outlast you in court. And remember if you lose the lawsuit, you will probably be countersued for the cost of their lawyers.
Basically the EULAs are written by Microsoft’s very expensive lawyers. Other corporations cower in fear of Microsoft’s lawyers; I know the ones in my office did. And the rewards you’d get would be a Pyrrhic victory at best. “Do you feel lucky, punk?”
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Of course not. But it won’t stop them from trying or spending billions on legal fees to avoid paying out a tiny fraction of that.
Pfffttt, Microsoft has been there, done this, and got a whole closet full of tee shirts for stuff like this many times over the years. In the end the users don’t care and can’t stop it. And they are, by in large, too lazy to change to something else to completely avoid it.
It hasn’t ever affected the bottom line enough to matter to them. They will just pull this
bugfeature and wait for a better day. Or perhaps they will figure out a way to introduce it piecemeal to disguise it better.You can only piss on our faces and tell us it is raining for so long.
“It’s raining, I see” says the blind man as he pisses into the wind
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.
Only data that is not stored cannot fall victim to attackers. It does not matter whether it is a ‘nigerian prince’, Microsoft or some agency. Even if you completly trust whatever entity with your data right now, they may become problematic in the future.
This is why a low profile is a crucial component of OPsec.
Recall is objectively stupid, even if Microsoft only had their users best interest in mind. And they don’t.
it isn’t a nightmare for them. they will be fine. they normalize everything they do
Yeah like I hate Microsoft, I am migrating to Linux, and the things I read about recall were pretty fucking horrifying to me. At the end of the day though the general public doesn’t give two shits about tech other than it works out of the box.
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.
Gradual shifts can snowball into huge shifts. a few years ago Linux gaming only existed for the dedicated crowd, that somehow managed to make it work. Now for many it is no different from their Windows experience for most games, sometimes even better.
Think of it like bubbles pressing against each other. It matters not only how much pressure your own bubble has, but also how much pressure the other bubbles have in finding the equilibrium. The Windows bubble isn’t only weakening itself, the Linux bubble is getting stronger and stronger
i assume you mean that sarcastically but that is a nightmare for them and every bit of lost marketshare makes it easier to lose more
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.
For anyone for whom Micro$oft’s reputation wasn’t already cartoonish villainy, sure.
For those of us from the olde worlde, who marveled at dancing monkey boy on a grainy quicktime file, it’s absolutely par for the course. They can shutter everything but cloud tomorrow and still rake in 100 Billion a year for the foreseeable future. It was a monopoly thirty years ago (convicted 20 years ago) that has eaten and shat whatever and wherever it wanted for decades.
The judiciary and congress don’t understand shit, and if they did m$ bought them. Done.
I don’t want to be the guy that always says Linux, but… …Linux
It is okay to be the person that always recommends Linux, especially if you are a kind person with the patience to explain things to people in approachable terms (and you don’t just scream at people SOMEBODY ALREADY ASKED THIS QUESTION USE SEARCH whenever a newbie walks in the door and asks the obvious questions a newbie would ask).
Now is the time, Linux is pulled up out front waiting to pick us up (with bags packed) and Microsoft is loudly shitting the bed upstairs, NOW is the time to walk straight out the front door, jump in the car with Linux and never look back. We owe it to Microsoft’s long relationship with consumers to leave Microsoft sitting confused on the porcelain throne wondering why they were abandoned and where all the toilet paper is (we are the toilet paper in this metaphor).
SOMEBODY ALREADY ASKED THIS QUESTION USE SEARCH
I don’t understand this approach, if you don’t want to answer, just don’t answer. Why would you waste time writing that you won’t answer?
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
HISTTIMEFORMAT="%d/%m/%y %T "
Then
history | grep -i “09/06/2024”
