Microsoft Will Try the Data-Scraping Windows Recall Feature Again in October (arstechnica.com) 62
Microsoft will begin sending a revised version of its controversial Recall feature to Windows Insider PCs beginning in October, according to an update published to the company's original blog post about the Recall controversy. From a report: The company didn't elaborate further on specific changes it's making to Recall beyond what it already announced in June.
For those unfamiliar, Recall is a Windows service that runs in the background on compatible PCs, continuously taking screenshots of user activity, scanning those screenshots with optical character recognition (OCR), and saving the OCR text and the screenshots to a giant searchable database on your PC. The goal, according to Microsoft, is to help users retrace their steps and dig up information about things they had used their PCs to find or do in the past.
For those unfamiliar, Recall is a Windows service that runs in the background on compatible PCs, continuously taking screenshots of user activity, scanning those screenshots with optical character recognition (OCR), and saving the OCR text and the screenshots to a giant searchable database on your PC. The goal, according to Microsoft, is to help users retrace their steps and dig up information about things they had used their PCs to find or do in the past.
They are failing like Google (Score:2)
Nobody wants this new crap. Bring back the Windows 3.1 aesthetic instead.
Re:They are failing like Google (Score:5, Insightful)
Somewhere between Win2K and WinXP, I think they had the user interface close to the best Windows was going to get.
Now a lot of what I see is change to justify subscription fees rather than increases in utility.
Re:They are failing like Google (Score:5, Informative)
I'd argue that point was Windows 7, but only because it had more than 16 colors available.
Not far off the mark, though - I'd always disable as much of the UI as I could, and the Control Panel on XP was superior.
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Windows 7 would have been perfect if it offered a Windows 2000 classic theme. The only thing missing from it.
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I used a program called OpenShell which let you tweak visual style and most behaviors to get Win7's start menu bar to look almost exactly like Win2K.
Currently using it with Win10 for the same reason.
=Smidge=
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Yep, I used that too, and another one that I can't remember the name of right now. They got very, very close to the Windows 2K look and feel.
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Windows 7 was the last version of Windows I had to reinstall, and I think I managed to reinstall it only a handful of times per system.
When I say "last", it's also the last version I used. I refused to "upgrade" and decided it was time to go all linux/mac. I miss games a bit, from time to time, but I prefer getting laid regularly instead anyway.
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Windows Classic still had the big stupid start menu that popped up. The Windows 2K start menu with it's clean look is what I would have wanted.
Re: They are failing like Google (Score:2)
I kinda liked 2000, but then I switched to Linux. I had enough then, but others make excuses to keep using Windows still.
Re:They are failing like Google (Score:5, Insightful)
I really do just wonder "How the fuck can people stand this?!" every time I sit down and use any Windows machine. If it's not ads in the start menu, or a new shitty GUI every release, it's keylogging spyware pre-installed. FFS, guys, will you Stockholm Syndrome dumbfucks ever leave your abusive OS spouse?
Ballmer is great (Score:2)
You shut your mouth and start screaming DEVELOPERS DEVELOPERS DEVELOPERS right now.
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And make sure you are covered in ball sweat!
Re:Ballmer is great (Score:5, Funny)
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Damn.. Wish I had modpoints.. You hit the nail DIRECTLY on the head.. It astounds me how many people, when shown the evil that IS windows, they really don't seem to care. I spent a 20+ year career supporting Windows and Linux. When I retired in 2010, I swore off Windows and have been happily on Linux since then. Unfortuantly I have some ham radio software that will not play nice with Linux, so I'm forced to keep a heavily castrated Windows 10 VM for running these radio programming programs. Beyond that, Mi
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Won't you PLEASE think of the officials?
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Good for businesses to spy on their employees, too.
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Not really. Google has been failing like Microsoft for as long as Google has existed.
Microsoft is just much, much more skilled at it.
Who the hell wants this? (Score:5, Insightful)
Pardon the unsavory terms, but who in their right mind would want this crap?
* It would allow an attacker insane visibility into a machine, even accessing redacted/deleted documents.
* It takes up space and resources which could be used for something else. Those Chrome tabs are not getting any smaller.
* This would be an absolute bonanza for lawyers doing motions of discovery.
* This could bring lawsuits about data retention, like GDPR lawsuits even though the company didn't actively retain stuff.
* This is a ripe surface for blackmail and extortion, not to mention data exfiltration on a degree never seen before.
Overall, why does MS keep pushing this garbage?
Instead, why can't MS just bring back the Windows 2000 UI with the start menu, because it is a lot more information-dense with presenting info, menus, dialogs, than what we have now?
Re:Who the hell wants this? (Score:5, Insightful)
Who wants this? ... Well Microsoft of course. YOU ARE THE PRODUCT NOW
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Who wants this? FIVE EYES [wikipedia.org].
How is this not obvious to everyone on this site?
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We have big fat portion of rose colored glasses on, and even that, buried in the sand, thinking, "well, I haven't heard about a massive NSA/ATT-like datacenter being discovered lately" along with a dash of "surely they'd need a warrant anyway."
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Because most of us do not live in your paranoid universe?
Re: Who the hell wants this? (Score:2)
You live with your head in the sand pretending you don't live under fascism, you mean. GLWT.
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Indeed. The enshittification process continues.
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"This would be an absolute bonanza for lawyers doing motions of discovery"
A much bigger bonanza for the legals will be for people being criminally charged for certain types of text, images or other files that MS helpfully passes along to LEO, like Google does with Gmail
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They still had Bill O'Reilly on when that was revealed, and he didn't say anything about it.
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The IT staff isn't even man-powered enough at ALL companies to keep data hacks from occurring. Having enough time to scan through all staff "recall" information is just not going to happen. The only company that wants this is Microsoft, for Microsoft reasons.
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Pardon the unsavory terms, but who in their right mind would want this crap?
I redacted the individual points, but if you add them all together, the answer is clear who would want this: A group of people who want absolute control over other people. This type of group usually finds expression within an authority structure, like the US Government.
Just another check box (Score:3)
It'll just be another check box for me to check when I debloat the system.
Re:Just another check box (Score:4, Interesting)
You mean another setting to be automatically re-enabled by the next semiannual update.
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And then another check box after that. :-D
You Know (Score:5, Funny)
People laughed at me. They laughed when I told them the danger in trusting Microsoft. They laughed when I dual-booted, installed VMs and started working to learn Linux.
I found equivalents to every Windows application I need. I got away. Took me 30 years but I did it.
They aren't laughing any more.
Re: You Know (Score:2)
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I've been saying that for years, too.
Sadly, I find most people are too dense to understand how they are being screwed, why it matters, and the idea of changing? Impossible hysterical response.
They'll go down with the ship.
(like Mike Lynch)
I won't apologize for that.
Re:You Know (Score:5, Insightful)
As one of those ancient neckbeard Unix people, I had it easier: I never let Microsoft in the door, so there was no migration to work through. I've lost track of the number of times people said "you can't live without MIcrosoft" or its equivalent, how many times they told me I was being stubborn (true), how many times they said that Microsoft would always be there (let's hope not), how many times they said it was too hard (for the most part: it's not), and so on. Meanwhile, I built systems and networks that just worked.
And of course once Linux came along and matured into something stable, I adopted it as well. Now I run a mix of Unix and Linux operations (more or less: Unix servers, Linux desktops, but not entirely) and I have the luxury of sitting back when Microsoft does something stupid, wrong, or predatory and observing it from the back row. My advice to those who aren't so fortunate is to follow in the footsteps of the upthread poster: once you get there, you'll never look back.
I don't know how much longer I have, but I would like to live long enough to see end (effective) end of Microsoft. They've done incredible damage to the art of computing and practice of system/network operations. I don't think it's an exaggeration to say that we're a quarter century behind where we would be if we weren't carrying so much of their baggage.
Re:You Know (Score:5, Informative)
Congrats. This is entirely doable in the home. This is impossible in the scientific and industrial world. I work in the former and all of our very specific and expensive instruments are windows-only. Can't even run them in a VM, as much of the software needs direct access to the instruments (our SCALAR units come readily to mind) and simply shuts down if it can't.
Heck, I can't even get Macs in here because the software doesn't exist for anything other than Windows.
It's very frustrating. On the other hand, it is job security.
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They aren't laughing any more.
They are laughing at me. I just updated and I can not play videos anymore. Worse yet, it segfaults and is reported in the output of dmesg. "Oh look, the whiny little baby uses tools that are so poor, they cause the kernel itself to hiccup."
All video games are dead too, but they don't cause the kernel any issues. :(
Mint, current.
Federal Trade Commission Does Nothing (Score:2)
The goal, according to Microsoft (Score:4, Insightful)
is to scrape as much user data to train their LLMs and sell to third party perverts. -- There, fixed it.
Disappointment (Score:2)
This is me, expressing severe disappointment - again - that a "Windows Recall" isn't what we all hope it would be.
Let's see how this goes. (Score:2)
Microsoft announced Recall, got massive backlash including from privacy advocates, then pulled back with just a minor blurb about rethinking it.
And, as many of us predicted, they just waited a little bit and are now trying again. Will they balk at the backlash, or will the folks who started that backlash figure, "Already said my peace on the matter," shrug and move on? Because it *NEEDS* to be sustained pushback, or it's happening.
Microsoft's more egregiously hostile moves always go down this way:
"TAKE IT
Recall = Data Farming Your Work for AI Training (Score:5, Interesting)
Microsoft will use the work that you do on their OS for training their AI to replace you, as their next product. Your work product data is more important to them than the cost of the OS or any other product or feature that they offer. They want you and your data for training their next AI/ML product.
Soon enough millions of people who have their work captured by this Recall feature will have their work ingested as a data source to Microsoft's AI training model to teach it what people use their OS for and how they do their jobs. Eventually this will be used to sell an Automatron OS/AI/ML product that will do the same work as the users of the past generation of this product who thought the OS on how to do their jobs.
There will be a gradual change and shift from the Recall feature taking just screen shots, to complete GDI calls for window objects and widgets, including text controls, and then it will include the capture inputs from the mouse and keyboard also, like the Microsoft Windows Problem Steps Recorder [microsoft.com] feature coupled with the Microsoft Visual Studio's Spy++ [microsoft.com] utility and Event Tracing for Windows (ETW) [microsoft.com].
All of these technologies exist and will only make Recall v2+ better at understanding and learning what is it that you do with their OS. Eventually, the training data that was promissed to be kept locally and encrypted will be digested and analyzed and uploaded to Microsoft's cloud servers to be used for training their AI. With Microsoft's push for OneDrive and cloud storage for everything this is an inevitable outcome.
* I've made this comment three times already to the associated stories.
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Everyone owns their own data by copyright.
Good luck having MS enact a blanket copyright agreement.
I guess they could always roll it out and then as forgiveness, but I don't think that would go over too well given the sensitive nature of people's PC's.
I'll take, Things I've never needed, for $200 Alex (Score:2)
The goal ... is to help users retrace their steps and dig up information about things they had used their PCs to find or do in the past.
"What is Microsoft Recall?"
More seriously, this will probably be used as some sort of spyware and/or backdoor telemetry (for apps w/o it built-in).
every corporation in the world (Score:2)
Most corporations don't trust their employees at all, and already run similar processes on employee's computers. If you are provided a laptop for work, and you work through a corp. VPN, you're probably already storing screenshots and keystrokes on a server somewhere so that if you do some insider trading or steal a bunch of PII data, they can either find out after or before you cause an incident. I can see the process doing that exact thing on my corp laptop right now.
Companies spend oodles of money spying
Hating aside... (Score:2)
For those who want to know (Score:2)
I can see how th
No Problem (Score:2)
I'd surmise that in all but the most devious business cases, Microsoft will offer a method by which users can turn this feature off. And I imagine that many will. Those that won't either have nothing worth protecting. Or they just can't do the search and figure out the instructions.
Either way Microsoft, enjoy the training data that you derive from this demographic.
Serenity (Score:3)
As sure as I know anything I know this: they will try again. Maybe on another world, maybe on this very ground, swept clean. A year from now, ten, they'll swing back to the belief that they can make people... better. And I do not hold to that.
Change your background image (Score:2)
Another invasive feature for the sheep (Score:2)
This will be abused one way or the other. Either some evildoer from the magic internet will run off with your precious data (which is *cough* protected *cough* by Windows Hello), or Microsoft will - of course for your "convenience" - put all that data on their servers.
What did you say? Disabled by default? Of course future updates will enable this without telling you about it, after all this is a feature you *cough* really want *cough*. When nobody complains anymore about this feature, the slider will first
Listen folks (Score:1)
Also helpful (Score:2)