this post was submitted on 23 Oct 2024
606 points (98.2% liked)

Technology

59287 readers
6348 users here now

This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.

Our Rules

  1. Follow the lemmy.world rules.
  2. Only tech related content.
  3. Be excellent to each another!
  4. Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
  5. Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
  6. Politics threads may be removed.
  7. No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
  8. Only approved bots from the list below, to ask if your bot can be added please contact us.
  9. Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed

Approved Bots

founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
[email protected]
[email protected]
[email protected]
[email protected]
[email protected]
606
Windows Recall is secretly installed and enabled on non-Copilot+PCs (Privacy Nightmare) (www.youtube.com)
submitted 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
136 comments fedilink hide all child comments
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] [email protected] 6 points 2 weeks ago (4 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] -2 points 2 weeks ago (3 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 2 weeks ago (2 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

Frankly that sounds like "OK, I did install a camera in your bedroom, but it's not like it's on or anything!"

[–] [email protected] 4 points 2 weeks ago

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.