Windows Recall today: Your data is private and stays on local machine.
Recall after 2 years: We may use your data to train our AI models, improve our services and personalize your experince.
Best part? It’s using your hardware and electricity to train the models.
In a few years they’ll charge you monthly for the priviledge of using/knowing what it collected on you.
Interesting way to put it. The first thing it made me think is that if they did the 2nd part entirely within your PC, would it be ok privacy-wise, and would the consumers be ok with it?
I haven’t looked into the current iterations options, but I think I still want the option to turn it off. Personally I’m less concerned with privacy and more concerned with it using up my computers resources.
Even if all the processing remained on my devices, I still wouldn’t want or trust it. Microsoft could change that policy at any time, claim something like my logging in to my local account constituted agreeing to their new terms, and expose screenshots of my password manager in an unsecured public data store.
Fuck Windows Recall, and fuck Microsoft generally for being so fucking awful to their customers but mainly fuck them for forcing me to finally make good on my threat to switch to Linux. I’ve been using Windows for over thirty years and switching off their spyware for ten, but this is the final straw.
I ditched Microsoft on my new build back in Feb. I installed Mint and it’s been a really smooth transition for me. I can still do everything I used to, although I know there are some use cases where it’s a problem for people. All the games I’ve tried run well.
But it does give me peace of mind that someone isn’t going to change my settings in a way that benefits them in a patch. I feel like I’m working with my OS to get things done instead of wrestling against what some corporate MBA wants.
No joke, that’s the distro I’m going with 🙌 Mint is great!
Mint is the distro of choice for people who want to work on their computer, not work on their computer.
Like I’m glad for all the nerds who change distros as often as they change pairs of pants and enjoy fiddle-fucking around with their setup, but some of us only want a computer that just works and doesn’t give us shit.
It’s funny you say that, because in my experience what you’re describing is Arch. Mint, meanwhile, was the first time I’d used Linux and had it “just work”. What distro are you using that you don’t have to “fiddle-fuck around” with it at all?
Fuck Windows Recall, and fuck Microsoft generally for being so fucking awful to their customers
Always has been.
No, there’s a bigger context that you’re not considering: enterprise IT orgs in privacy-sensitive/confidential domains.
This whole feature is an absolute non-starter in biotech, defense, finance, and a bunch of other industries. It’s an infosec nightmare. Legal teams will categorically refuse to allow W11 to be installed simply due to the legal jeopardy it would put their own orgs in, since it implicitly trusts MS with who the fuck knows how much data exactly.
I continue to be shocked and baffled that MS isn’t taking their stance on this product as an “always-on” thing back to the drawing board.
I consult in some companies that don’t even allow copy/paste in outlook. Like, these are actually MS security policies that can be set.
How in all of the actual fucks could they allow MS to see everything on your screen.
I agree with your non starter assessment.
Yeah I work for a major company in healthcare and they don’t allow Windows 11 for several reasons.
But also outside of the healthcare data issue, there’s the legal issue of retaining data. Our company doesn’t allow us to retain emails for more than 2 years and there are lots of other retention policies, and software to enforce them, that don’t require keeping data, but instead require deleting it. This is a common trend in major corporations right now. You can’t have data hacked or subpoenaed in a court case if it doesn’t exist. Recall is great for micromanagement of employees, but bad for just about all other parts of a company. I don’t get who is behind this and who they think they’re appeasing with it.
Don’t they already have a non copilot version of Windows 11? I believe the OPM is already using it.
Nah. Even if it’s local, I’ll burn my CPU cycles on what I want to, thanks. That’s like installing a bitcoin miner in your PC and claiming, “But it only runs in the background.” Fuck off and buy your own hardware, Microsoft.
Even if the storage were strictly local, there would still be some privacy concerns. Hackers can’t steal data that isn’t there.
At that point, you’re just paying for training Microsoft’s AI.
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Set up a new pc for someone today. Turned off all the OneDrive backup options. Rebooted and copied their files from a USB to SATA adapter. They turned the backup settings back on again!
Can’t trust Microsoft.
Yep. I’ve set up Windows a few times recently, and they don’t give even the slightest consideration for your settings. Few days later, they changed right back.
They will be configured to benefit Microsoft first. Maybe not immediately. But it sounds like a losing game.
You need to make a Powershell script or batch that uninstalls/turns off the feature and then make a scheduled task that runs the ps1/bat at login.
Its insane that this is what you have to do to keep this shit off your system, but it’s effective.
I had to do this with New Outlook because it kept reinstalling after Windows updates.
They “trust me” dumb fucks
May not have been Gates that said it, but it embodies an attitude which appears prevalent throughout big business.
Edit: O&O Shut Up is a free tool that helps you easily turn off/disable quite a few of the worst “features” on Windows.
I think that was The Zuck.
You would be correct.
There’s Windows 11 IoT LTSC if you really need Windows, but Microsoft is going to continue to fuck its users, and I don’t know why people in the know would choose to continue to use an OS that’s actively working against them when non-corporate, open source alternatives exists (Linux, or for the more niche people, BSD, Haiku, Redox)
I don’t think PCVR works on Linux yet. The gaming support on Linux being driven largely by Valve is removing a lot of the reasons for consumers to use Windows, though. I wonder how long before big corporations push back on this Microsoft spyware, though.
I don’t own a VR headset, but I thought SteamVR worked fine on Linux. Gamescope even has specific VR modes.
I can speak from experience having used both wired (Index) and wireless (Pico 4 with ALVR) VR on Linux and the performance and stability is horrible. Always has been sadly. I can play some VR games on Linux but overall it’s not worth it in the current state.
Can’t trust Microsoft.
Always has been.
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I used Windows back then (edit - and MSDOS before that). There was already EEE as far back as Netscape Navigator and they are far from the only example. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embrace,_extend,_and_extinguish
Then there is the whole “they stole from Apple who stole from Xerox” before that.
Essentially - at every juncture where MS has had competition, they have behaved poorly. “Linux is a cancer.” Sure thing, Ballmer.
Sure but they are so criminal they turn them right back on in an update.
“You can turn it off”, “it’s an optional feature”, they didn’t even last a year! What ever happened to slowly boiling the frog?
“Slowly” is relative. Also remember that windows 10 was the last windows you would need to ever buy? (To be fair that is more true then Microsoft would like these days)
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Windows 10 on day 1 was still ‘calling home’ and recommending candy crush in the start menu as I recall. I had to dig into the registry to gut the windows store from it entirely to get windows 10 to act how i want an OS to act. Windows 7 was the last good windows IMO.
But think of the shareholders. They would loose so much money they would probably have to sell their third yacht!
But think of the shareholders
I have many thoughts of the shareholders.
Most of those thoughts are quite violent.
I would totally do that. Only problem is that the third yacht really is my favourite, so I’m gonna pass if that’s okay. Thanks!
Love the outside the box thinking though. Really inspirational!
A real straight shooter with upper management written all over em
Shareholders ought to be thankful we don’t know their names, addresses or anything or we’d be knee-capping them dumbasses.
you wouldn’t do anything keyboard warrior
Neither would you, “Champ”.
put the keyboard down and back away
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There is no amount that could answer that because the Ad profit is on top of the already existing product. It would always be viewed as a “loss.”
Not that they’re losing on the cost of operations and development of the OS, but because the ad revenue is in addition to the product…
Greed fucking greed fucking greed. Greed turtles all the way down…
Last time I bought a Win 10 Pro DVD to install on a customer’s machine, it was AUD$195.00. And I still had to use powershell to de-provision some of the bullshit. Better than the Home version (AUD$165.00), at least I can use GPEDIT to disable some “features”.
Of course, a Windows licence on a pre-built Dell or HP would be a lot less.
You can’t ungrind ground meat back.
While using Linux with Mate is perfectly possible
But you can feed a scrambled egg back to a chicken.
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There is the LTSC version (not sure if 11 is released yet, but 10 definitely is) which is basically debloated windows. Made by Microsoft, and targeted towards embedded devices.
(re)Ditched Windows on my PC a while ago, still have to use Windows at work. Just checked my work laptop running Windows 11 (standard laptop, not a “Copilot+PC”) - sure enough, that Recall shit is installed and active. Disabled it, and made a post in our main company Teams channel with screenshots. Will be interesting to see if there are any reactions to this.
To find out if it is active in Windows 11, open up ‘cmd’ and use: (typing this from memory, hope it is correct)
dism /online /get-featureinfo /featurename:Recallto disable it, you need a ‘cmd’ instance with admin rights:
dism /online /disable-feature /featurename:RecallIt will be re-enabled after update : )
Mentioned this in another comment. Take that second dism line, and put it in a batch script and make it a scheduled task that runs at login. Or use a Powershell script to make it a little smarter - check if it’s enabled first and then disable it if it is.
Modern problems require modern solutions.
Any IT admins in the audience: this is what remediation scripts were made for
My company blocks screenshots (luckily we don’t have high definition cameras in or pocket at all times, else that would seem stupid) so I’m wondering what they will do if those are user accessible.
I’m going to check at my work tomorrow too. I’m gonna be quite unhappy if I find it.
So wait, did I miss a step or is this NOT the recall feature they announced for Copilot Plus PCs? None of the screen snapshots, none of the AI search.
As far as I can tell it’s some variation on the logging search that was in Windows in Win8, right? At least when it comes to user-facing functionality.
EDIT: As far as I can tell, people mentioning this mean the full Recall feature, but even though the package shows up on my Copilot+ PC the functionality itself is nowhere to be seen. I’m still confused about this and relatively convinced something is being missed somewhere.
I’ve found it very interesting. So far as I can tell it’s installed and enabled (even on non co-pilot PCs). However I have yet to see or hear of anyone that has found evidence that it is actually running and doing its job (capturing screenshots and creating the database for the AI model).
To me, the fact it’s installed and enabled and they’ve not stood up by now and said “Ooops our bad, it was only meant to be on copilot PCs and we should have added it to the features menu so you can turn it off” just suggests that, the stuff is there and at some point they will flip a switch on ALL PCs to enable it.
It’s quite lucky that a week or so ago when I got some new SSDs, I put aside 2TB for a linux boot to replace my old broken previous linux dual boot. Not booted into windows in over a week.
I mean, it’s not like accidentally running Recall once is going to automatically compromise all your data to Microsoft in perpetuity. I don’t even know what the final implementation is supposed to be, I’ll make up my mind when I can review it, not before. Ditto for Apple’s version on the new iPhones and all the other stuff being promoted right now.
But in this case I’m just puzzled. At this point it sure looks like they installed some package or service that is probably the ground layer for the actual feature at some point, but that doesn’t mean it’s doing anything at the moment. Maybe logging the same metadata as the Win8 feature, but it’s not clear (there is a “activity history” setting in the privacy settings now, perhaps it’s part of that?).
If anything the panic shows how tainted the Recall name has become, but that’s not new for Microsoft. That original logging feature was also widely hated, as was a lot of their search or their current, mandatory “widget” news feed that nobody has ever found useful. The question is how widely tainted it is, and whether normies will want to burn it with fire as much as the Linux-facing techies.
To be clear, I installed a new Linux system totally separate to this and just coincidental, and there’s still some things I need to use Windows for, so it’s not going anywhere soon. But for sure this whole thing is one more reason to be suspicious of Microsoft.
As I said, I am not sure there’s any evidence showing it’s actually doing anything yet. None I’ve seen at least.
But, I think there’s some very suspicious points that stand out to me.
- Installed by default
- Enabled by default
- Hidden from the user unless they specify the feature by name from command line (listing from command line doesn’t include it either). And I wonder if being searchable by name was an accident that will be patched out next time.
If this wasn’t going to be anything to do with the recall functionality that has been previously described, then I feel fairly sure they would have posted an announcement about it by now. Silence in general is a bad thing for this kind of thing in my experience.
But, since it’s not doing anything now I’m more in a “wait and see” stance personally.
Well, I don’t know how long this has been a thing or how prominent it is. I haven’t seen it in the more mainstream news channels, this thread was my first notice. I expect if people start to freak out in larger, more mainstream circles they may want to address it. Right now it’s only reached a few people, I think.
There’s been a lot of youtube videos made on the tech side of it. But, like I say they all make a fair point. It’s installed, enabled and hidden. But none of them have shown any evidence of it actually collecting data yet.
This arrived in the 24H2 windows update I think it was about a week ago.
Frankly that sounds like “OK, I did install a camera in your bedroom, but it’s not like it’s on or anything!”
Definitely. And it’s actually “We installed a camera in your bedroom, but it’s hidden, you cannot remove it. It’s enabled but don’t worry it’s not recording”.
I just ideally would like Microsoft to say something. Because at the moment it’s super weird to enable it on PCs that it’s not meant to run on.
Switched back to Linux this week and I couldn’t be happier.
Upgraded*
If it’s free, you’re the product… Oh wait.
Unless it doesn’t make money.
Apparently, my irony missed the mark.
The irony that’s with the paid OS that you’re the product.
That wasn’t clear to me, but it is a pretty funny point.
Luckily my installation was free
Wait! The only selling point of those “AI” PCs runs on non “AI” pcs?
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Switching to linux few years back is really fucking printing…
I was spending so much time cleaning up windows and then microshit would roll my settings back🤡
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Saw this bullshit coming, already got a linux mint dual boot setup on my work pc.
PSA: If you have a bigger usb formatted to the ntfs file system, consider switching it to exfat file system when working with linux. I had a hard freeze up and couldn’t get my files off for a bit, and this what I suspect was the issue.
What version of Linux did you go with?
Linux Mint 22 Cinnamon
For FUCK sakes…
I have a 256GB SATA SSD machine here, that I want to put a fresh install of windows on a 1TB M.2
And NOW is the fucking time windows puts out this fucking Win11 24H2 garbage… that’s BSOD’ing peoples computers, having other issues, and now this.
Microsoft has definitely not been a great tenant on dual boot systems over the past year. Usually you get the occasional MBR overwrite, but it’s been pretty bad. Windows has been assuming it’s the only OS.
I made this prediction before kind of joking, but I feel like it could still end up this way, where in the near future we’ll all be installing a FOSS AI after a fresh install whose sole job is to target the corpo AI’s on our local machines and continuously cripple them.
FWIW I was worried this might be on W10 (hey, they might try it) so I tried the >dism commands found earlier in this thread (thanks btw!) & got “Feature name Recall is unknown”.
Safe for now
This is why win10 in a vm
Does win10 vm run games well? (like power hungry games)
I don’t recommend going that direction. I think you’ll get better results with Proton and Proton-based solutions like Lutris and family.
Proton is a better option unless the game needs Anti-Cheat, which most won’t work in a VM, anyway
Personally I dual boot Win10 LTSC with fake credentials and some privacy tweaks for games that need to be on windows
I only play games that work native or via proton. I just use windows for the CAD programs that i need to use. I do gpu pass through and native for my host system idk how this would be for gaming tho.
I have heard, though not tried, that GPU passthrough works for those diminishingly few problematic games where a certain anti-cheat is the sticking point.
I’ve tested it, and while it does work, there are some issues:
- The anti-cheat doesn’t work for all games (delta force demo).
- Sometimes i had strange sound glitches.
- I had to use a second mouse. In certain games where you drag the camera (like Sins of a Solar Empire), the camera spins uncontrollably fast.
- It’s not as fast or responsive, but good enough.
- Game Pass games don’t run.
Because of these points, I still keep Windows 10 as a dual boot option.
I’ve been running Pop!_OS with the Cinnamon desktop environment on my machine at home for the past 3 months. I’m very impressed with the out-of-the-box experience. All my games run in Steam or Lutris.
Fuck Microsoft.
For me the same, but with kubuntu. Linux is really ready to be used as a desktop.
