Recall preview in Windows 11 - goodbye to privacy ? AI madness.

Capt'n Midnight

Expect an instant GDPR slapdown round here , but still… insane.

Microsoft have a preview for a feature that may appear in Windows 11. It won't be in regular computers (yet) just those CoPilot+ PC's that have a Snapdragon X series processor.

It takes a screen shot every few seconds and stores it on your local drive.

Recall does not perform content moderation. It will not hide
information such as passwords or financial account numbers.

Every few seconds anything you have on screen (except InPrivate in certain browsers) gets stored on your local drive.

If anyone can access your login on your machine they can search it … Malware perhaps could search too ?

Words fail that they can even consider this.

_Kaiser_

This sort of thing is why I'm giving serious consideration to migrating my home network to Linux in the near future - and I say that as someone who's been using Windows since the 3.1 days both personally, professionally and as a core part of my career.

I could live with Windows 10 as they've (mostly) stopped messing with that now, but it goes EOL next year of course. I have one machine running Windows 11 and it's a constant battle to keep control of, even with GPOs (my homelab runs Server and AD)

If the Linux community could consolidate and focus their efforts on ONE "default"/best distro, it would make a lot of inroads I think. Equally if there was an easy AD-replacement/Server-client model to replace Windows Server I'd be very interested - but I don't have the time or patience in my home life anymore to be trawling through command lines and excessive configuration just to get to what I have now.

ItHurtsWhenIP

It'll make things very easy for abusive partners. Absolute madness from M$FT.

_Kaiser_

Windows 11 Enterprise IOT LTSC was released this week. Have installed it on a spare laptop to check it out.

None of the bloat, less hardware requirements than regular Windows 11, and stability and guaranteed updates for years to come.. Just like the good old days of Windows 7.

Unfortunately it's not available to regular users but it shows that Microsoft still know how to make an actually useful and minimalist operating system.

It also really highlights that the aim now is to mine as much data and push as much ads and sales opportunities at users as possible.

I have Windows 10 21H2 LTSC on the other partition of the laptop too. Equally superior to the standard installation.

The EU has managed to rein them in on some of this stuff. It's a pity they don't follow it to it's logical conclusion by forcing them to offer these builds to the general public as well.

purifol0

Cortana only worked here for a wet weekend before MS turned it off due to EU law so I expect the same thing will happen here.

Secondly for those thinking of going the Linux route…do! It's waaaay better than it was years ago. Any Linux distro that has "Plasma Wayland" as its desktop environment by default will give you a traditional windows desktop with zero bloat and most of the fancy technical features that new hardware supports.

Even better you don't have to do a big switcheroo, just boot from a USB drive and click "try" not "install" and you can have the full thing free without wiping your hard drive

Glaceon

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122172009#Comment_122172009

I could have written exactly the same as you have here. I've tried Linux distros a fair bit but have always found them too clunky for general use. Stuff like Wayland bugs, NVidia GPU flakiness, the feeling that I need to go to the terminal for way too many things. The server side is excellent, I have four Debian VMs doing various things and they chug along quite happily, but I never warmed to the desktop side.

Oscar_Madison

What’s the REAL purpose or benefit of these screen snapshots vs the stated benefits I wonder?
Who the hell wants to look back at screenshots of their computer? It makes no sense except likely some big benefit for the company themselves?

ItHurtsWhenIP

It seems that M$FT have finally listened …

https://cyberplace.social/@GossiTheDog/112576234172896735

Whether they're capable of continuing to do the right thing remains to be seen.

Gadgetman496

….

_Kaiser_

All they're doing is changing it to Opt-in rather than Opt-out - for now. It doesn't prevent a malicious actor enabling it through malware. It doesn't stop Microsoft activating it themselves in a future "cumulative/feature update".

The entire feature needs to go IMO. If anyone actually wants it they should have to download the installer and manually install it on their device.