Microsoft’s Recall feature is still threat to privacy despite recent tweaks
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How'd you do that? I've made registry tweaks, group policy tweaks, etc and my windows machine still eventually hits a limit where it forces updates around the 12 week mark. Granted it's still longer than before, it isn't completely disabled.
At that point it's easier to install Linux.
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At that point it's easier to install Linux.
I run Linux too, but I have to use windows for some contract jobs.
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You may want to have a conversation with Nobody, I don't think he got the memo.
Regardless, the point is Apple gets more of a pass. If I say "nobody actually expects privacy from Microsoft" that's undeniably true, but hardly works as an excuse, does it?
Sure but Windows users are far more likely to demand privacy while Apple users just accept thats not a thing on Apple.
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Oh, they love to chew each other up.
But, you know, it's in that left-of-centre, obnoxious-software-engineer way where they all think they have the right answer to whatever the issue is, they're going to save the world and make Linux the One OS and everybody else is an idiot. That doesn't count.
Well you see my distribution of choice is the perfect choice, my window manager is the best one, and my specific choice of utilies (ex: Terminal, shell, text editor, file manager, toolkit, etc) are the best ones. Clearly you're the one trying to divide Linux users :3
(And of course my standard is the best one, yes there are thirty other universal standards but mine is better)
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How'd you do that? I've made registry tweaks, group policy tweaks, etc and my windows machine still eventually hits a limit where it forces updates around the 12 week mark. Granted it's still longer than before, it isn't completely disabled.
around the 12 week mark.
Not all computers need to tell the date & time, just uninstall clock.exe
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How'd you do that? I've made registry tweaks, group policy tweaks, etc and my windows machine still eventually hits a limit where it forces updates around the 12 week mark. Granted it's still longer than before, it isn't completely disabled.
It was a combination of things between policies and taking over folder and file permissions. I can look up the specifics I used if you are looking to replicate it. It's a bitch to undo unless you write down everything you change.
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The same has been true of email for years, but less bad. Activists will need to be even more careful in who they trust.
In what sense?
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Part of why i knew so-called "digital rights management" was fucking bullshit was because very little software ever came out that empowered me to manage MY OWN rights in the digital space.
I need there to be FOSS applications that allow me to root-level BLOCK applications from perceiving what I'm doing, to just fucking SANDBOX ABSOLUTELY EVERYTHING BY DEFAULT and let me whitelist what specific things are allowed to directly access the hardware.
Sadly I am not as tech savvy as I used to think I was. I might've been technologically clever twenty years ago but I hadn't managed to keep up... I think what I've described might be referred to as a "hypervisor"? And I'm told it's an overbearing, clumsy, heavy-handed overkill measure that would be difficult to implement and make everything a pain in the ass to do. So ... shit, man, I dunno... i'm just so damn tired of my hardware being bossed around by people I didn't authorize.
Programs ran through Flatpak can only access permissions and directories that it has explicit permission for. This is perfect for a very small program that only does one thing, it can get rather awkward when you need it to access multiple storage volumes. For example, I wanted to have my Steam games stored on different hard drives, but they were never visible through Steam. I had to override the Flatpak permission to give access to my mounted disks for it to work.
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I've disabled windows update completely so I can pick and manually dl updates. Never going to put that recall shit on my pc.
I've disabled Windows completely so I can be safe and sound. Never going to put that shit on my PC.
-- sorry, it seemed funnier in my head.
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It's a centralized search that can dig through your activity cross-platform and parses it through a centralized AI. Whether the data is stored in a log or as screenshots is a difference, but not as big of a difference as people make it out to be. It just feels intuitively weirder because one is humanly readable and the other one isn't.
To be fair, that's my takeaway from a lot of AI backlash. A whole bunch of it is people finally getting an intuitive grasp on activities that big data has been doing for years or decades and it finally clicking into shock because they can anthropomorphise the inputs and outputs better.
No wonder the techbros have lost their intuititon for what will trigger backlash. In many cases they've been doing far worse than those things with zero awareness or pushback.
Don't worry, Microsoft is bringing semantic search to Windows too. That way you can have the worst of both worlds.
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In what sense?
- if you send plaintext, their email service could spy on them
- once they decrypt, they could accidentally reply with the decryped text, or it could get backed up if they store a copy somewhere
- screen readers could store decrypted email
In general, if you don't trust the receiver, you shouldn't send sensitive information. Windows Recall doesn't change that, if they're competent, Windows Recall won't be enabled.
I think this is more an issue for less technical users instead of activists, because activists will be more careful about who they trust than a secretary or something for a powerful individual.
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Access controls is the big difference. Apps with sensitive data can choose to hide stuff to a system wid search API. It can do so on an individual level, even. And even if it previously was accessible it can be drumroll recalled. Exposure happens when a search is made.
Microsoft Recall is all or nothing. Once it has been displayed Recall has it and you can't selectively erase stuff. Exposure is immediate. It's just purge the whole database, or leave it all in there. Apps can't retroactively flag stuff.
... But leaving AI summaries on by default was very stupid by Apple
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Access controls is the big difference. Apps with sensitive data can choose to hide stuff to a system wid search API. It can do so on an individual level, even. And even if it previously was accessible it can be drumroll recalled. Exposure happens when a search is made.
Microsoft Recall is all or nothing. Once it has been displayed Recall has it and you can't selectively erase stuff. Exposure is immediate. It's just purge the whole database, or leave it all in there. Apps can't retroactively flag stuff.
... But leaving AI summaries on by default was very stupid by Apple
I'd argue that this is way more nuance than the public in general puts into the issue. In fact, the goalposts have moved quite a bit. "The big difference" used to be the local encription of the data, but it became not it once Recall implemented that. Or the opt-in, which went the same way.
That's not to say I don't think it's a better idea to have per-app support (which is incidentally how Microsoft implemented the feature in Windows 8 the first time), but I will say that's not why people are mad at one and not the other.
I don't actually know if you can selectively erase specific screenshots from the database because I, again, can't find any traces of Recall on my supported PCs for the life of me. Coverage had made it seem that they could, since presumably the much criticised side effect of having a local, freely accessible database with just a bunch of pictures is that you could... you know, access those. Did they obscure it further in the reimplementation?
And also, I think people believe I'm being argumentative, but I'm not. Can somebody point me at the Recall opt-in and/or some explanation why my Copilot + device running 24H2 would not seem to have it available anywhere? I'm confused about the rollout here. I don't want it on, but I'd like to try it and see what the practical implementation is for myself (and be double sure I have it turned off once I'm done with that).
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Funnily enough, Signal has circumvented the issue by marking their chat window as DRM content, making it invisible to Recall.
They used the invasion of privacy to destroy the invasion of privacy?
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This is just a thinly veiled ad for AdGuard.
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Funnily enough, Signal has circumvented the issue by marking their chat window as DRM content, making it invisible to Recall.
They didn’t circumvent the issue - they did what Microsoft tell developers to do in regards to their programs and recall lol.
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I'd argue that this is way more nuance than the public in general puts into the issue. In fact, the goalposts have moved quite a bit. "The big difference" used to be the local encription of the data, but it became not it once Recall implemented that. Or the opt-in, which went the same way.
That's not to say I don't think it's a better idea to have per-app support (which is incidentally how Microsoft implemented the feature in Windows 8 the first time), but I will say that's not why people are mad at one and not the other.
I don't actually know if you can selectively erase specific screenshots from the database because I, again, can't find any traces of Recall on my supported PCs for the life of me. Coverage had made it seem that they could, since presumably the much criticised side effect of having a local, freely accessible database with just a bunch of pictures is that you could... you know, access those. Did they obscure it further in the reimplementation?
And also, I think people believe I'm being argumentative, but I'm not. Can somebody point me at the Recall opt-in and/or some explanation why my Copilot + device running 24H2 would not seem to have it available anywhere? I'm confused about the rollout here. I don't want it on, but I'd like to try it and see what the practical implementation is for myself (and be double sure I have it turned off once I'm done with that).
After the heavy criticism they changed it from default on to (opt out) to default off (opt in).
In theory you could modify it's database, but they did mention applying stricter security (but what good does that do when the frontdoor access remains via the prompts)
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What I don't understand, is what I would need and use it for? Never in my life I thought "damn if only I had a screen recording of everything I did 1 week, 1 month or 1 year ago". Like I don't get the use case, ignoring anything else. There is no use case.
I can view my terminal history and my recently accessed files. I have version control with git where I want and need it.
There is no use case.
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What I don't understand, is what I would need and use it for? Never in my life I thought "damn if only I had a screen recording of everything I did 1 week, 1 month or 1 year ago". Like I don't get the use case, ignoring anything else. There is no use case.
I can view my terminal history and my recently accessed files. I have version control with git where I want and need it.
There is no use case.
So you’ve never wanted to find an article/headline that you vaguely remember seeing? Or a product that you looked at? Or a picture that you looked at?
There absolutely is a use case for full reachability of everything you’ve done on your computer. Git commits and terminal history and “recent” files list don’t even come close to providing the same thing lol
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Apple dropped a whole lot of vague shit that they “promised” would have some sort of holistic and on-device/private benefit to users if they pulled a full data profile of you together, kept it on-device, kept it secure, etc, etc.
Windows stealthed an update onto PCs that suddenly started capturing and processing unsecured screenshots of everything that users were doing without ever telling anyone why or what it’s for or how it would work. People found out that it was unsecured by looking in its unsecured folder. It wasn’t the same thing.
That said, obviously, Apple Intelligence is bullshit and doesn’t work or do anything of any use other than making Siri slightly prettier.
Windows “stealthed” recall onto people’s machines? What? It was a hugely advertised feature, exclusive to only the new copilot+ machines, and was an opt-in test feature lol
