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Giving Windows total recall is a privacy minefield (www.theregister.com)

submitted 5 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

88 comments fedilink hide all child comments

Microsoft's Windows Recall feature is attracting controversy before even venturing out of preview.

Microsoft said in its FAQs that its snapshotting feature will vacuum up sensitive information: "Recall does not perform content moderation. It will not hide information such as passwords or financial account numbers. That data may be in snapshots stored on your device, especially when sites do not follow standard internet protocols like cloaking password entry."

Mozilla's Chief Product Officer Steve Teixeira told The Register: "Mozilla is concerned about Windows Recall. From a browser perspective, some data should be saved, and some shouldn't.

Jake Moore, Global Cybersecurity Advisor at ESET, noted that while the feature is not on by default, its use "opens up another avenue for criminals to attack."

Moore warned that "users should be mindful of allowing any content to be analysed by AI algorithms for a better experience."

Cybersecurity expert Kevin Beaumont was scathing in his assessment of the technology, writing: "In essence, a keylogger is being baked into Windows as a feature."

AI expert Gary Marcus was blunter: "F^ck that. I don't want my computer to spy on everything I ever do."

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[–] [email protected] 41 points 5 months ago (4 children)

I think the problem with big companies like Microsoft, EA, Ubisoft, Bethesda, etc is that once all the smart & creative people have gone, all you have left are the "line must always go up" business idiots, who have no idea what their company does or how to fix it.

CoPilot is exactly the kind of End-stage, "let's screw our customers to death" idea the CEOs come up with right before their company implodes.

The reason I know that's true is because when this stupid idea for CoPilot came up, there were no smart people who immediately said, "do you have any idea what a terrible f*cking plan this is?"

[–] [email protected] 8 points 5 months ago

I'm sure some did, but, unfortunately, those people aren't the ones making the business decisions.

The "line must go up" people are in charge because "line must go up" investors are saying the "line must go up".

[–] [email protected] 8 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago)

Ironically the business people are terrible at business. I genuinely think LLMs (despite their economic evils) are stunning pieces of technology.

But they are money sinks and the only plans for profit are subscriptions or advertisements. It's Social Media/Streaming/Tech Startups panicked hype investing all over again. Subscriptions and advertising just simply do not pay the bills for huge server and gpu farms.

But sustainability isn't what they want is it? They want the stock to go up to then cash out when it's about to fall. sigh

[–] [email protected] 4 points 5 months ago

all you have left are the “line must always go up” business idiots, who have no idea what their company does or how to fix it.

boy does this seem to describe google nowadays

[–] [email protected] 3 points 5 months ago (1 children)

This is something that steve jobs talked about in an interview that I cannot find at the moment. Its ironic coming from him, but he was talking about when a company truly begins to die. His theory was that when a company is founded, the people that made and designed the product/service are in positions of power. But as a company grows and lives on they get replaced with marketing people. They dont know how to make anything, but they do have that "line go up" mentality. Instead of making something better, the marketing and sales people find ways to sell worse things. Again, hilarious coming from him but i think he had a point.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 5 months ago

I don't know if it's really about a breakdown between 'innovators' and 'sales/marketing', but instead a breakdown between people who sincerely want to deliver something intrinsically valuable versus product delivery being some unfortunate obnoxious means to the end of "more money now". A company founded from the onset of "don't care, just make money" will generally fail, and the ones that succeed are the ones that care. Then you move beyond the "founder" generation of a company and then you get to watch the effort get scavenged to pieces.

Whatever may be said of Jobs, he really liked the company and products he was in charge of. Sometimes he would value form over function more than I would like, but it was still at least a facet of the actual product rather than hyper fixation on how to make the profit margins grow without much regard for the product itself. Yes, massive wealth flowed in as they caught the culture just right with iPod and then iPhone, but I don't think it ever descended to cannibalizing the company to make those numbers even better than they were.