Microsoft says it has “listened to feedback” following a privacy row over a new tool which takes regular screenshots of users’ activity.
It was labelled a potential “privacy nightmare” by critics when it was unveiled in May 2024 - prompting the tech giant to postpone its release. It now plans to relaunch the artificial intelligence (AI) powered tool in November on its new CoPilot+ computers.
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When it initially announced the tool at its developer conference in May, Microsoft said it used AI “to make it possible to access virtually anything you have ever seen on your PC”, and likened it to having photographic memory. It said Recall could search through a users’ past activity, including their files, photos, emails and browsing history.
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But critics quickly raised concerns, given the quantity of sensitive data the system would harvest, with one expert labelling it a potential “privacy nightmare."
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[Pavan Davuluri, Microsoft’s corporate vice president of Windows and devices says] that “Windows offers tools to help you control your privacy and customise what gets saved for you to find later”.
However a technical blog about it states that “diagnostic data” from the tool may be shared with the firm depending on individual privacy settings.
[Microsoft says in a blog post that users can remove Recall entirely by using the optional features settings in Windows.]
MS doesn’t realize how close they are to being disposable to gamers. If a few more game companies made their catalogs linux-native, they’d be toast.
Lots of people would be shocked just how many games offer linux-native binaries, not just windows ones that work with proton.
For the time being, Proton is good enough for me. I think devs/publishers refusing to enable their chosen anticheat to work with Proton is what is holding things back now for tech people. For other people, there’s even bigger challenges, and I doubt they even read up on these “tech nightmares” so they’re good with just continuing on with Windows.
The whole Recall thing is what finally made me get off my lazy ass and make the jump to Linux. I chose PopOS, and I’ve been very impressed with the out-of-the-box experience. Between Steam and Lutris, I can play just about any game I want to.
It feels like I actually own my laptop now.
“When asked for further comment Microsoft fucknuts replied with: It’s the best part of being a monopoly in the PC market. Don’t like what we’re doing? Where’s the average user going to go, Linux? BWAHAHAHAHA! Hey normies, get fucked and feed my bank account! He then spat on the reporter and gave a small child the middle finger.”
Thanks, ill stick with snipping tool
I have been using Linux off and on for 25 years (using the server pretty consistently, but always hedged with the desktop for various reasons). Since Proton and GE-Proton allow every game I want to play to work in Linux, back when Recall was first announced, I decided to finally stop hedging and went all in on the Linux desktop.
And I’m not going back. Everything is working for me and Microsoft can screw off if they think I’m going to allow such blatant spyware in my house. Their telemetry was always suspect, but this is now overt despite any assurances they attempt to make.
Edit>> And their “oh you can uninstall Recall” isn’t trustworthy when they will easily reinstall it with a Windows update (they have done this in the past with other software — notably Edge and Teams).
