What does everyone think about Microsoft Recall?

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cmdbit

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#312851 23-May-2024 13:47

I am trying to sift out the facts from the opinions. Would something like this be actually useful to us both personally and professionally, or are the corporates just riding the hype of AI?

https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2024/05/microsofts-new-recall-feature-will-record-everything-you-do-on-your-pc/

I can imagine a scenario with you asking your PC, "Did I send an email to Bob yesterday?" Your PC searches its indexes and says "Yes Chris, you did send an email to Bob yesterday at 2:24pm".

I'm trying to keep an open mind about this but it's hard given the possible repercussions.

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#3233796 23-May-2024 14:10

It's a nice feature I am looking forward to using. Personally, I have come across many scenarios where I have tried to remember I browsed on YouTube or a website I wanted to read or watch again after few days and spent a long time trying to find it again in browser history. The feature can be customized and turned off so I dont get the whole privacy thing. If you have telemetry enabled, you have been sending data for far too long.

I do get concerns from cybersecurity point of view if someone does gets access to your machine, can it be easily searched? MS did confirm that a user profile logged in cannot search for data under another logged off users' profile and vice versa. Its such a hot topic that once this available to public, I am sure it will be put through its paces by industry professionals.

Do whatever you want to do man.

Goosey

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#3233798 23-May-2024 14:14

I don’t see how this would be useful.

if you needed to go see what you were doing an hour or two ago….you probally have wider issues to deal with both health and organisation.

if you need to find an email you possibly have sent then the usual search methods would be the first step… again, we all do it and if you don’t know that already then you probally have wider issues….

ezbee

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#3233802 23-May-2024 14:39

Ahh but the AI having seen what you have been looking at and your patterns will know before you do what you want to see next.
Ok it will actually be figuring out what you might be prone to buying next and tossing advertising at you!
Microsoft can then sell primed and ready to buy customers.

Microsoft does need you to buy a new PC/Laptop to push along new Windows licenses sales too?
So promoting to consumers that your present hardware lacks a NPU is a great way to get many caught in FOMO.

They do need to compete with Google and Apple who have their own ways of scooping up valuable data on users and monetizing it.

Windows 11 already sees locking out older hardware , and playing whack-a-mole on ways around this.
Then you kill off the very serviceable Windows 10 that has reclaimed the market for Microsoft.

The one two punch, to push along new hardware/licenses.

The partitioning of AI processing on the device vs cloud.
How much metadata actually exchanged to the cloud, we will see.

It could be valuable data for AI training as sites institute anti scraping measures, for Bing6.
A sites valid users are effectively being used to scrape data?

Once its out in the wild people can see interchanges with Microsoft servers and how much spooky-advertising-at-a-distance users get.

Sure it will have its utility, so tradeoff.

I name 2025 the year of the Linux Desktop ! :-)

Jvipers2

214 posts

Master Geek

#3233804 23-May-2024 14:42

It's great! Everyone will then have a virtual PA with them.

Even better for Microsoft as they'll have loads of user data that will be advantages to their future development...

Not so awesome for privacy though...

gehenna

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#3233806 23-May-2024 14:45

This feels like Time Machine on the Mac but smarter. I don't know why people are freaking out, it's being processed on device (sure we can be sceptical, but that's what we know right now) and arguably will be more secure than Time Machine was merely by virtue of it being contemporary. It's new and it's unknown, but I don't see it as any more risky than Time Machine or similar services. That all changes if the data ends up in the cloud, of course.

ANglEAUT

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#3233828 23-May-2024 15:32

Isn't this an advanced version of the "Activity history" / Timeline feature that already exists in Windows?

The Activity history never worked to my satisfaction after minimal trials.

Hopefully this recall feature has better context awareness.

Please keep this GZ community vibrant by contributing in a constructive & respectful manner.

ANglEAUT

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#3233830 23-May-2024 15:36

Goosey: ... if you needed to go see what you were doing an hour or two ago…

It's not about an hour or two for me, but more like 3-5 days ago.

Also, did I communicate with Bob about this issue via e-mail? or IM? Or was it a comment I added to a shared document? Of the many project documents, which document again?

Please keep this GZ community vibrant by contributing in a constructive & respectful manner.

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gzt

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#3233949 23-May-2024 20:27

Limits and limitations:

article: Recall won't take snapshots of InPrivate web browsing sessions in Microsoft Edge or DRM-protected content. However, Recall won't actively hide sensitive information like passwords and financial account numbers that appear on-screen.

gzt

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#3233951 23-May-2024 20:33

ANglEAUT: did I communicate with Bob about this issue via e-mail? or IM? Or was it a comment I added to a shared document? Of the many project documents, which document again?

That could have saved me some effort today. With smart enough ocr it could easily be that good. Imo search on windows has been ineffective for a long time. W95 had great search ; ).

cmdbit

22 posts

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#3233957 23-May-2024 21:20

I agree with gehenna that it's relatively new and unknown and perhaps we should give it a chance. It's just that some of us (myself included) have a healthy skepticism about Microsoft and how it has conducted itself in the past.

Also, this is for Copilot+ certified machines with a NPU chip (Snapdragon now and Intel / AMD later). How about devices without a NPU chip? Will they have an alternate pathway for similar functionality, such as "snapshotting every 3 seconds all system activity"? Hopefully not.

And I will be damn sure that Microsoft will have to come out with a Windows 11 / Windows 12 build with all this functionality stripped out (eg. LTSC) for government and high security industries like defence.

Also, constant read/write SSDs. :-(

mentalinc

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#3233960 23-May-2024 21:42

gzt: Limits and limitations:

article: Recall won't take snapshots of InPrivate web browsing sessions in Microsoft Edge or DRM-protected content. However, Recall won't actively hide sensitive information like passwords and financial account numbers that appear on-screen.

So a PCI-DSS nightmare?

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cddt

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#3234075 24-May-2024 09:27

I think this is a terrible idea.

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wellygary

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#3234085 24-May-2024 09:57

mentalinc:

So a PCI-DSS nightmare?

Its certainly a huge potential exploit,

The question is, how easy is it to get stuff back out? and what on-device security is enabled to protect the info

tehgerbil

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#3234115 24-May-2024 11:31

This is the brainchild of a think tank on data aggregation.

They hit a snag however in the legality and morality aspect of of monetising the data.

So they employed PR spin doctors to make it appetising and appealing to the end user.

After this technology has matured and been available for a while, possible a year or three, the TC's and C's will quietly be changed word by word to allow more intrusive capturing and send of this data to Microsoft for monetisation.

This initial spin of it being beneficial and 100% stored locally only is to make it palatable and lull consumers into a sense of security.

The fact anyone thinks this is somehow for you, and not for Microsoft to massively profit off is laughable.
You don't become a 3 trillion dollar company by having morals and anyone who genuinely believes otherwise is (in my opinion) incredibly naive.

I mean it's a beautifully elegant data collection end-game! Why to pay Google for analytics? Don't need cookies to track web footprint. And doesn't matter what browser people use. And who cares what ad-blockers they install.

Will I use it? Yeah! It sounds pretty useful and hopefully they design a really good way to search through the data.
Am I going to pretend Microsoft have released this for the good of consumers? Not in the slightest.

cddt

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#3234233 24-May-2024 12:18

I will not be using this - it is a strong disincentive to return to using Microsoft products on my personal devices.

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