It’s a nightmare scenario for Microsoft. The headlining feature of its new Copilot+ PC initiative, which is supposed to drive millions of PC sales over the next couple of years, is under significant fire for being what many say is a major breach of privacy and security on Windows. That feature in question is Windows Recall, a new AI tool designed to remember everything you do on Windows. The feature that we never asked and never wanted it.
Microsoft, has done a lot to degrade the Windows user experience over the last few years. Everything from obtrusive advertisements to full-screen popups, ignoring app defaults, forcing a Microsoft Account, and more have eroded the trust relationship between Windows users and Microsoft.
It’s no surprise that users are already assuming that Microsoft will eventually end up collecting that data and using it to shape advertisements for you. That really would be a huge invasion of privacy, and people fully expect Microsoft to do it, and it’s those bad Windows practices that have led people to this conclusion.
That will rely on businesses moving away from Windows. That is where they make a ton of their money with Enterprise licenses and Office 365 subscriptions.
And businesses don’t give a shit about their employees’ privacy
They do care about keeping their company secrets and proprietary info though. Recall could make corporate espionage a cake walk.
We handle a lot of IP on our Windows PCs so it’s debatable. However, in recent years, Microsoft has taken over most of our services with SSO, office 360, teams, etc so who knows.
If you look at sysadmin forums and groups it seems like most recommend disabling recall. Just about every enterprise will have confidentiality or security requirements that recall is simply inconsistent with. It’s understandably been a hot topic.
Yup. It’ll depend on how they handle Recall at the institutional level.
It’s a given that hospitals and law firms will have to turn it off, as they’re required by law to honor privilege. We’ll see what choices they make.
I find the nosedive in Twitter’s stock price these last few years encouraging. It seems for many there is a red line.