This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
They will just enable it by default later when the heat passes. They always do. You no longer own Windows.
Never did. It's just more and more obvious with each new "feature" that it's built for monetization, not for user functionality.
In the '90s and early 2000s, Microsoft's business model was the classic one of selling products to customers. Today, it's all about the cloud, advertising, and AI, where the product is the user.
My prediction is essentially one day windows pcs will be Linux that act like thin clients that go to windows 365.
“The ability to disable the…feature during the setup process…” does not mean opt in, that means opt out.
Knowing windows setup, you need to click customize during the setup process and then go through several setup pages before you’re presented this option (or have to dig into additional/advanced settings to find it).
Most people won’t do this, won’t know how to do this, or will receive the pc with the initial setup complete and won’t know if this is on or off.
And even if you find it, it will have an idiotic and obscure name, like “advanced history experience” or something absolutely nondescript
Also when you try to disable it they will use all sorts of dark pattern pop ups to dissuade you from disabling it.
not to mention they are known to re enable telemetry on systems after updates.
i doubt this will be any different.
This is the screen the user is presented during setup.
Even without all the invasion of privacy implications, I'm skeptical it would even work. Source: 20 years of "Windows is checking for a solution to the problem" that has never worked even once.
I've actually had those troubleshooters work for me several times in recent years. Mostly fixing networking issues.
I guess for the basic stuff I do when I've had programs crash I've never seen it do anything, but nice to know it's not completely useless
Frankly, this is one of the areas I'm most looking forward to seeing what integrated AI can do for Windows. A couple of months ago I was having trouble with getting my printer to work and what I ended up doing was taking a screenshot of the printer settings and pasting the literal image of the screen into Bing Chat to ask it what I was doing wrong. It was able to parse my settings out of the image and figured out what I needed to change to make the printer work.
Having a troubleshooting AI like that that can actually "read" the entire state of my machine would be great.
There is a screenshot of the opt-in screen in the article. There is no default, just two buttons to say yes or no.
I swear, outrage should only be allowed based on the amount of work one is willing to put in before expressing it. If you don't do the reading, you don't get to be publicly angry. It'd save us all so much trouble.
For the record, the feature was always optional, as per the original announcement. Presumably the change is it is now part of the setup flow where it was going to be a settings toggle instead.
Which is, incidentally, how this used to work the first time Windows had this feature, back when it was called "Timeline" in Windows 10.
The screenshot doesn’t show preceding flow to reach it, but I did miss the “requires windows hello to enable” bit, which does suggest that wherever it is, it would have to be opt-in.
Ok, let's assume (for the sake of argument) that everything is on the up-and-up, and Microsoft will behave in a completely equitable and user-friendly way with regard to this feature going forward. Where does that leave us?
There is a spyware feature built into Windows 11. It is off by default, but a malware that wants to capture this kind of information doesn't have to install anything, and it doesn't have to run any background processes that might get caught by a system monitor or blocked by application whitelisting. All it has to do is turn this built-in feature on, and then exfiltrate the data later.
Setting this off by default doesn't remove the security issue.
Ok, let's assume (for the sake of argument) that everything is on the up-and-up, and Microsoft will behave in a completely equitable and user-friendly way with regard to this feature going forward
This is so fantastical that there's no point in even having the hypothetical discussion about it.
You're right, it's fantastical, but it's still worth talking about.
It's worth talking about as it solidifies the argument more than just assuming your opponent is acting poorly. The argument of "Even if Microsoft is a saint, it's still a bad idea. But we know Microsoft also has a history of data collection, spying, anti-patterns etc." is a much stronger argument than the latter half on its own
They're just going to do a classical boil-the-frog operation:
You forgot Step 0: make an announcement so overtly egregious that when you walk it back, the compromise sounds reasonable
"You can still install it with a local account!"
Just disconnect your network cable, press this magic key combination and type this undocumented command: "MSBLAOIGKSDF /ACZSF"
Still in the os...
...For now...
"For only $5.99 per month you can opt out of the service! Sign up today!" - MS in the likely near future
I still don't trust Microsoft. I hadn't bought a Windows since Windows 10, and this won't change that.
WHY THE FUCK WOULD SOMEONE WILLINGLY OPT IN?!
Cause they're going to show a pop-up that advertises some "cool new feature", and the 99% of users who aren't tech literate will say yes and never think about it again.
People on this site severely overestimate how much the average person cares and their overall level of tech.
People will be deceived into opting in via some UI anti pattern like they do with the online user accounts and onedrive now.
Until they flip the setting by themselves because ms tend to do that
...says the company that wanted to destroy every bit of your privacy. I don't care what they "promise", don't listen to them.
Microsoft is finished. Install Linux.
Lies but ok.
I'm sure it's corporate speak for 'unless you opt into opting out of Microsoft recording everything's
I have zero reason to trust companies who are known to not be trust worthy.
And who's to say they don't have this 'opt in' setting enabled for a week then upon the first update, whoops...it was auto enabled for everyone 'sorry...you must not out now and sorry not sorry but we already stole everything. See y'all next update!'
They use dark patterns and cryptic dialog boxes to get old people to opt in.
Are you certain you don't want to enhance your Microsoft experience?
^YES, I CRAVE A LIMITED ESPERIENCE^
If it's an embedded feature, then I categorically refuse to trust that I the user will have sole control over the on/off toggle.
I am basing my suspicions on Microsoft fucking around with my user settings over several decades and Windows iterations.
Microsoft will just enable it via an update once all the fervor dies down. They haven’t abandoned the plan, and won’t, not while your data is pure profit for them.
Hell with them, no more Windows PCs in my home. I’m sick to death of everyone and their mother trying to both advertise to me and sell my data without my permission and at zero benefit to me.
Do they really think we believe any of their lies? We don't control Windows, anti-libre software (it fails to include a libre software license text file, like AGPL). Dangerous! 🚩
No one is going to opt-in to having screenshots taken of their activities on the OS. If no one opts-in then it will hinder Microsoft's original plan of collection such data for copilot. Along comes the new marketing language to soften the approach and they still collect data.
No one would opt-in to having all of their personal files sent to the cloud. But Windows managed to get my father using OneDrive even though he had no idea what it was. He was absolutely pissed when I told him. Somehow that wasn't enough to get off of windows completely though.
I feel like if browser history was invented today people would have the same reaction to it.
Browser history was implemented before companies massively abused privacy.
It was an honest feature for users.
We also learned a lot about security regarding password/credential extraction from browsers.
Windows Recall might be an honest feature. It might be super secure and really useful.
But Microsoft doesn't have the trust to pull this off
This is the best summary I could come up with:
Microsoft had originally planned to turn Recall on by default, but the company now says it will offer the ability to disable the controversial AI-powered feature during the setup process of new Copilot Plus PCs.
Recall uses local AI models to screenshot mostly everything you see or do on your computer and then give you the ability to search and retrieve anything in seconds.
Everything in Recall is designed to remain local and private on-device, so no data is used to train Microsoft’s AI models.
TotalRecall extracts the Recall database so you can easily view what text is stored and the screenshots that Microsoft’s feature has generated.
“In some cases, this will mean prioritizing security above other things we do, such as releasing new features or providing ongoing support for legacy systems.”
Davuluri references Microsoft’s SFI principles in today’s response, noting that the company is taking action to improve Recall security.
The original article contains 747 words, the summary contains 151 words. Saved 80%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!
*Windows won’t take screenshots of everything you do after all (that the company will admit to without you knowing)— unless you opt in
Microsoft speaks.... thhhhe bullllshitttt -lazlo voice
