5mo ago

Microsoft Recall screenshots credit cards and Social Security numbers, even with the "sensitive information" filter enabled

www.tomshardware.com

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5mo ago

Microsoft Recall screenshots credit cards and Social Security numbers, even with the "sensitive information" filter enabled

www.tomshardware.com /software/windows/microsoft-recall-screenshots-credit-cards-and-social-security-numbers-even-with-the-sensitive-information-filter-enabled

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5mo ago

Tom's Hardware: Microsoft Recall screenshots credit cards and Social Security numbers, even with the "sensitive information" filter enabled

www.tomshardware.com /software/windows/microsoft-recall-screenshots-credit-cards-and-social-security-numbers-even-with-the-sensitive-information-filter-enabled

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5mo ago

Microsoft Recall screenshots credit cards and Social Security numbers, even with the "sensitive information" filter enabled

www.tomshardware.com /software/windows/microsoft-recall-screenshots-credit-cards-and-social-security-numbers-even-with-the-sensitive-information-filter-enabled

91 comments

Recall remains a phenomenally bad idea. I don't understand why anyone would green light it.
- $$$$
  
  And if that doesn't convince you: $$$$$.
- It sounds like a great idea if you don't think too long about it and none else has it yet. People like that don't care about security or privacy concerns, as long as there is no law against it. Gotta earn money and the competition is fierce.
  And with "people" I mean executives just as much as engineers. Gotta earn money fast > being ethically aware of the implications of your work
  
  I guess. I mean I immediately thought "I don't want it capturing the porn I look at", but maybe people really don't think about privacy at all.
  I don't really see how it makes money, since it's bundled into windows (right?).
- How?

Doesn't surprise me one iota. This is why I will be abandoning Windows next year and moving to Linux and doing the same for my parents.
- Why wait? Hell, you can test out a live distro in a virtual machine to start learning about it right now before taking the big leap. Unless you're already familiar with Linux anyways. 🐧
  
  Indeed I am. I already have a dual-boot setup on my laptop (not yet on my desktop) but need to finish testing Linux alternatives and/or running under WINE for some of my Windows-only software. I've been slowly chipping away at that over the past few months and expect to continue to do so over the next few as well, after which I hope to be ready to completely switch over.
  
  I've been trying to buy a new computer for years. I finally put the remaining pieces on my Christmas list lol.
- I hope the transition goes smoothly for you!
- Same boat! I've switched over two of my lesser used devices to Mint already (an old surface tablet and my work laptop), only hesitation is with my gaming machine. Everything has been set up just how I like it so I'm not eager to start from scratch there but once I'm confident and comfortable on my work laptop I'll make the switch there too
  
  While dual booting into Pop, I can see my Windows SSD and all of its contents. It might make testing a little easier for you!
- I'm so mad that I'm going to call customer support, they're going to look at my social security, phone number, password, whatever in recall, and I don't have a choice except to not interact with other people on computers.

well of course it does. There is no way for it to know what it is capturing. Best it can do is capture it, and maybe discard it if it manages to detect any sensitive info. Which won't work every time
- Technically, it could be coded to recognize the various formats of strings and blur everything indiscriminately.
  
  OCR is never perfect.
  A partial credit card number or partial SSN wouldn't match the format, but is still sensitive.
  
  that would require knowing the formats of strings. And it requires the text to be text.
  What if you had a photo of a handwritten piece of sensitive information?
  
  Blurring isn't destructive.

The only way it could possibly censor sensitive information is if it captured it in the first place and then determined that it was in a sensitive category and then censored it. Recall still has to capture it first to make that determination.
I don't understand why this isn't everyone's immediate thought after hearing Microsoft say their system would censor sensitive information. How could it possibly know what to censor without reading it first? Of course it's going to invade your privacy, and then maybe they'll selectively delete some of it when you ask them to.
I wouldn't be surprised if it all gets uploaded to cloud storage first, and then the "sensitive" stuff gets deleted from the local storage only.

Im always astounded at how tech companies swing between 'for your convenience' and 'for your security/ privacy', and how often users just take them at their word, then wonder why the noose on the neck of their personal choices and freedoms keep getting tighter and tighter.

PSA - It's probably gonna capture religious and political affiliations and weird pornography fetishes, too. Lol.
As was mentioned, it's just a bad idea.
Edit: Here's a particularly cynical prediction: Joe Consumer angry to learn that Recall backups were used to lower his credit score, and (incorrectly) deny his insurance claim.
- Benefits:
  a little better local search?
  Downsides:
  identity theft
  more intrusive ads
  loss of insurance coverage
  ruined relationships
  scammers draining bank accounts
  Seems reasonable.

Lol it’s like the old screen-cap malware/viruses from the XP days, except M$ is doing it for “legit” reasons.

how in the hell do they think this is going to go over in It for corporate America with sensitive data on everyone's workstations?? what about the rest of the world ?
- This will go over extremely well. (for the CEOs) Management, ignoring all advice by the company's IT people, will order them to enable Recall to "improve productivity" because one guy on LinkedIn said it made him one quattuordecillion percent more productive, IT will protest but will be inevitably shot down. Everything will be fine for a bit until some attacker inevitably gets into their systems and steals the Recall data from all their active workstations, leading to the compromise of almost every system they have.
  They offer their customers 1 free year of credit monitoring, promise to do better, never get punished by the law, rinse and repeat.
  Meanwhile, the CEO's paycheck will never take a hit no matter what they do.
- I can't imagine there's any way someone with an enterprise license can't either switch this off or, more likely, capture it internally. Will wait for a windows enterprise admin to confirm or deny.
  
  Well it's currently opt in for normal users, and yes you can create a group policy to ensure it is disabled on all managed devices.
  https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/client-management/manage-recall
  No chance they would ever launch this without it being manageable, they would get sued to oblivion by the government pertaining to clearenced information.
- They'll turn it off.

The Windows 11 migration is mandatory, and there is no lube. They’ll gradually lower the tech requirements as it approaches to minimize people looking for alternatives.
But make no mistake, Microsoft is asserting the leverage of its market share for full enshittification. Linux or Mac or eat the shit they’re giving you.
- They’re gonna do the most to get people to use Windows 11, but they really dropped the ball with the ads, surveillance, and how shitty it’s become the past few years.
  
  You think the average Joe knows MS are now taking screenshots of their desktop and storing it somewhere on their server?

Oh look! Microsoft is doing the thing they assured us they wouldn't do! What a fucking shocker! What is it, the tenth time this year?

The new version of Recall is now opt-in rather than opt-out – I got prompted to enable Recall immediately after installing the Insider Build.
This seems to be the important bit, hopefully it stays opt in.
- Narrator: "It didn't"

How does the filter know which information is sensitive...

Microsoft Recall is a bad idea with tremendously and insanely amateuristic and shit implementation

Surprised pikachu

What is the advantage that this is supposed to provide?
Just make a history tab that shows all the programs I've opened and when. I opened them.

This is exactly why I'm, if possible, wanting to remove the WiFi card from my desktop. Hopefully no way for macrohard to force install win11 if I do that and use that one utility that disables automatic updates. Pretty sure if I did this early enough I'd hopefully be safe. Doesn't make a huge difference when I'm hopefully gonna be updating my desktop before this all goes down, but probably still a good thing to do just in case (especially since I don't have plans of getting rid of my current desktop).
- Are you not planning on using the internet ever again?
  
  At least for that device. If I ever need anything for that device that I don't already have, I'd be able to download from a different device and transfer it via thumb drive or if I need to and have space, using an external drive.

😬😬😬😬

91 comments