A PR disaster: Microsoft has lost trust with its users, and Windows Recall is the straw that broke the camel's back

Ya, a PR nightmare for the next 15 minutes until the next unbelievable thing comes along and the ADD nature of people forgets windows is watching everything they do.

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

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.

I mean 95% of their customers probably don't care or even know what Recall is but...

You guys trusted MS before this???

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.

Not really

For the retail market, most people just have phones not computers anymore. Microsoft has already lost The Battle of Windows phone.

For the Enterprise market none of this recent b******* is going to enterprise customers anyway, they would have group policies and volume licensing deals to avoid all the b*******.

For those poor retail customers who still run Windows, they suffer, but they're minor, not significant

I’m telling everyone I know it’s time to move to Linux, or worst case Mac.

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.

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.

it isn't a nightmare for them. they will be fine. they normalize everything they do

You can only piss on our faces and tell us it is raining for so long.

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 bug feature and wait for a better day. Or perhaps they will figure out a way to introduce it piecemeal to disguise it better.

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).

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.

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.

Outside of the "Microsoft bad" comments, this is a prime example of why big tech companies need to stop promoting AI leads to a position where they are able to have influence over initiatives outside of AI.

The worst thing to happen to basically every product/service in tech right now is AI. It's made Google unreliable in the eyes of normal people for the first time in decades, it's destroying trust in Amazon content across reviews and Kindle, it's adding features to Facebook that no one ever wanted, etc.

I don't want to be the guy that always says Linux, but... ...Linux

Gamers will literally install root kits on their PCs just because an update pop up tells them to. They really don't care lol.

TL;DR:

• Windows Recall, part of Microsoft's new Copilot+ PC initiative, has sparked major privacy and security concerns.
• The feature uses AI to capture and store screen data locally, allowing users to search for past activities using natural language.
• Despite assurances that data is not uploaded to the cloud or used by Microsoft, user trust is lacking.
• Microsoft has a history of practices that have eroded user trust, including obtrusive ads, ignoring user preferences, and requiring Microsoft Accounts.
• Users are skeptical, fearing future misuse of the collected data for advertising or AI training.
• Windows Recall reportedly stores data unencrypted, making it vulnerable to access by third-party apps and potential malware.
• The open nature of Windows amplifies these risks, unlike more secure systems like iOS and Android.
• Users have compared Windows Recall to spyware, with many threatening to switch to other operating systems like Linux or Mac.
• Microsoft's attempts to keep the development of Windows Recall secret did not help build trust.
• Windows Recall will only be available on new Copilot+ PCs, requiring specific hardware not present in existing PCs.
• Users will have the option to disable the feature, but there are concerns about it being enabled by default.
• Despite security issues, the feature is effective in helping users find lost or forgotten data.
• It could improve productivity if trust and security concerns are resolved.

Linux ftw!

Straw that broke the camel's back? Every vertebra in that camel's back has been smashed with a sledge hammer over the past 30 years.

Windows 95 was the last version I was excited about; Windows 98 SE was the last version of Windows I willingly purchased, and XP was the last one I willingly used. When they announced Win7, I downloaded Ubuntu 6.06, "Dapper Drake". Since then, Windows has only existed on my computers as pirated, virtual machines.

You know what would be a nice thing to put into windows?

A fucking decent way to search for files.

Also, grep and tail, as implemented in Linux. It's 2024 and there's no native equivalent to tail -f *.log. How embarrassing.

Stallman just keeps being right*

*About software freedom

I finally switched to Linux Mint a week ago. I've just had enough of Microsoft and I couldn't think of any more reasons why I shouldn't switch.

I've got Libre Office for all my productivity needs. All my Steam games work under Linux. My VPN works just fine. Firefox for web browsing. Thunderbird for email. And Wine to run those 1-2 Windows programs that I just can't do without.

Microsoft: oh no we might loose 0.0000001% of users, it doesn't matter since we can shove our software down people throats

I see no broken backs here. People have been composing songs about Bill Gates being a faggot (I'm not homophobic, that was just the climate back then) since he entered the general conscience. Microsoft being both clumsy and criminal has been the butt of too many jokes since Windows 95 at least.

I'm too young to remember anything older than 98SE, but I remember that when XP came out, people were complaining that it's slow ugly shit as compared to 2K, and it felt that if MS doesn't change the general direction, people will remain on older stuff or move to alternatives, Vista was hated so badly that everybody suddenly forgot the hate for XP, 7 was first advertised as something sky cool and impossible, then turned out to be kinda mundane, but usable. Actually with every Windows OS new brand there's an outrage. With every MS big news there's an outrage. They always deliver the opportunity.

TL;DR - Hoping that MS will kill itself is stupid.

Buy a mac or support steamOS adoption or just get a linux distro. This will drive the improvement of nontechnical consumer GNU/Linux

I know it's WindowsCentral but the article has some pretty naive takes. Given the propensity of threat actors to target Windows due to its market share it's impossible to not see a system that records user activity as a huge treasure trove for both malware and hackers.

It also doesn't mention that Microsoft claimed that it would be impossible to exfiltrate Recall data and of course researchers found it not only possible but trivial, with the data lacking even basic protections. Assurances that there are mechanisms to prevent Recall from secretly monitoring you mean nothing when prior assurances about safety have been found to be paper thin at best.

Further it ignores that telemetry gathered by Windows has dramatically increased in the last several years with methods to disable it being eliminated or undone by OS updates. Microsoft is hungry for user data and it would be absurdly naive to think that Recall won't be a tool they use to gain more of it. If not now, then definitely later.

The author does point out that Recall has been weirdly under wraps, avoiding the usual test bed for new feature rollout. Microsoft has been acting shady about the feature and then the feature itself does shady things (like record PII, credit card data, etc.), of course users are going to think the worst. At this point it's a survival tactic.

Microsoft doesn't have trust issues because of bad PR or a few missteps. Microsoft has trust issues because they have violated user trust repeatedly for decades. They have done nothing to make users feel like they care at all about keeping Windows secure and safe and they clearly have no regard for user privacy. This only question is whether this backlash will do anything to make Microsoft reconsider the way it treats its users. I predict they will learn all the wrong lessons from this.

Both Apple and Microsoft are two sides of the same coin....

One went left, the other went right, both going to the same location....

The only thing to consider is how you prefer to travel and how quickly you want to arrive....

and here i am, happy that i could buy a notebook for 200 bucks less w.o. a windows preinstalled on it, enjoying my beginner friendly linux distro.

The day Windows 10 loses support is the day I primary (or solo) boot Linux on my gaming desktop. The more news I read the more certain I am in this.

I do think that the concept of recall is very interesting, I want to explore a FOSS version where you have complete ownership of your data in a secure manner

TIL: There are still people that trust Microsoft.

Man, there is a LOT of people in this thread hoping to normalize this, or pretend it will happen anyway, or that it's 'not really a PR disaster', or that people will ignore it, or-

Go make your money elsewhere, christ.

I wish Linux weren't completely fucking impenetrable for casual users.

The switch to Linux will have to come from the bottom up. Corporations will NOT switch until Microsoft costs them serious money.

It's the 1, 2, 3, 4 punch of

"Haha windows 10 EOL is soon and no your computer cannot upgrade 😏"

Followed by the

"We're thinking about.. no? Okay well anyways, we're gonna shove ads into the UX, even after backpedaling after backlash"

Then the

"Listen the security situation is p bad and we're not too sure what to do about it. Lots of internal accts have been compromised. Probably yours too, we don't really know. Shhh, we got big AI news soon."

And lastly the

"Unveiling, the biggest security nightmare tool in the history of connected devices. From the writers of Total Recall and the masterminds behind Ads in your OS comes: Recall!"

I don't care what windows does to rectify this. My parents next machines are either Linux or Chromebooks.

If windows 12 isn't FOSS, Microsoft can pound sand.

OH, it was been a long time coming seeing this type of headline again, it's....glorius!

Microsoft is most years a #1 and sometimes a #2 Funder of: Rust, Python, and Linux. Are those destined for an E^3 "rug pull" too? Will it ever stop this kind of behavior, consistently conforming our behavior to itself with the money and industry position it leverages?

Don't forget in calculating that industry position that OpenAI is now able to contract to the DoD for offensive capability.

dumb fucking corporations will still line their pockets with money.

I don't think this will bury MS because they can easily market this to enterprise clients ( if they haven't already ). Recall is a particularly useful tool for any employer that wants to keep track of everything employees do, especially in an age of WFH. They probably figured they can take the PR hit from users concerned about privacy and move on unaffected.

Do people outside of tech care?

The struggle is real for M$ - recall is a Security Incident waiting to happen.

Microsoft has already taken a step back: Microsoft implements drastic changes to Recall after criticism

• Recall needs to be enabled during installation
• Windows Hello is needed so that only the users can view it's own screenshots
• Recall database will be encrypted

Microsoft lost my trust a long time ago. For the last 10-15 years, my only relationship with them is, "how much sh*t am I willing to put up with before I switch to something else?"

And CoPilot/Recall was the breaking point.

Linux!: Had set It up years ago when it was a slog. Came back recently after Windows did this— and it was so much easier.

Work? Yes. The comfort of knowing I’ve put off for one more day the tech ubergods carving my life open? Also yes.

Microsoft should go further and further with this so that windows becomes worse so that less people use it.

Aside from the security nightmare, I'm really curious what havoc the LLM can cause by hallucinating stuff, based on how suggestive a question is asked.

Wife on husband's account: "What dating sides did I visit this year?"
"Here are the 5 most popular dating sides you visited last year:..."

"When was the last time employee X watched porn and on what side?"
...

As much as I liked Visual Studio, its privacy intrusiveness was my final straw.

They say this like anyone is going to do something...

I know that I shouldn't, but here's what I think about this whole deal, illustrated with a single image macro:

Get wrecked, Microsoft.

I think that the article does a good job highlighting how much of a trainwreck this is, because Microsoft is not to be trusted. The Windows users hysterically complaining about this are not expecting Microsoft to behave in some outrageous way; they're expecting Microsoft to behave as usual.

The article was revised with a PR release from Microsoft saying they'll make the feature opt-in.

Let's of course not forget that things like upgrades to Windows 11, and use of an MS Account instead of local account, were opt-in...until they weren't. Require them to sign a contractual agreement that this feature will remain opt-in forever.

And yet again, install Linux. Leave Microsoft behind

This is the best summary I could come up with:

As CEO Satya Nadella described it, Windows now has a photographic memory that uses AI to triage and index everything you've ever done on your computer, enabling you to semantically search for things you've seen using natural language.

Your favorite web browser, video editor, or music streaming app of choice could release an update that begins scraping data from Windows Recall and uploading it to its own backend.

Many have already assumed the worst; that Windows Recall will eventually be used as a means to sell data to advertisers and train AI models, and that if it's not happening today, it's only a matter of time.

It's a feature reserved exclusively for new PCs shipping under the Copilot+ umbrella, which means if you want to use it, you'll have to buy a new device with a neural processing unit (NPU) that can output 40 TOPS of power first.

But there's a very dark cloud hanging over this feature right now, and a lot of privacy conscious people are simply not going to be able to subscribe to the idea of Windows Recall in its current form.

I suspect this means we will see new features and capabilities added to Windows Recall over the coming months, along with updates to ensure the data it collects is secure on the device.

The original article contains 2,259 words, the summary contains 219 words. Saved 90%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!

The average user is not even going to know this was a thing

Once again, the penguin was been vindicated.

Well, getting their OpenID Signing Key for Azure Active Directory stolen was magnitudes worse in my opinion.

https://www.cisa.gov/sites/default/files/2024-04/CSRB_Review_of_the_Summer_2023_MEO_Intrusion_Final_508c.pdf

Why is Lemmy showing me news from the 00's?

Is this article some kind of apple propaganda?

P. S: I fucking hate Windows.

Glad I switched from PC to Mac back in 2022 because I was pissed Microsoft was forcing me to upgrade hardware to switch to Windows 11 which I didn’t want. Apple to me is more private and will be more thoughtful with their AI tools to expand user functionality. Screw Microsoft. This is a user that had used PCs since the late 1980s…

Microsoft has done nothing to earn any good will or trust. Everything seems to spite the user or just harvesting maximum user data.