The person quoted in the article says admin access isn't required and to bolster this gives an example of someone with admin access being able to access the recall database. I'm confused.
Trust is moot when someone can abuse their position with no consequences. Windows has been the overwhelmingly dominant desktop OS for 30 years and it is unlikely to lose that position any time soon.
I work in a typical MS shop and as usual their evangelism is really strong. Everyone in the admin team is a hardcore Microsoft promoter, everywhere from internally on Yammer and externally on socials. They're probably fishing to get made MVP. But still, I have more self-respect. While they're all eagerly piling on Copilot studio I'm making my own bots with ollama. I don't like having my knowledge and experience locked behind someone else's brand and interests.
I'm very critical and feel they are a mediocre company which mainly floats on being "just good enough to not pass over" because of their marketshare. The old "nobody got fired for buying IBM" thing. I don't think they're actually leaders in anything. They're just big so they're hard to get around. Every third party solution we've replaced with a MS alternative was more capable, more ethical and easier to use. It was always a step back to settle for the MS solution.
Now again with the whole Copilot war they can do nothing wrong in the eyes of my colleagues. I'm glad to see I'm not the only one seeing this.
And the FTC is going after anyone but Microsoft for anti-competitive behaviors. The desktop world looks bleak for people that depends on Windows.
[0]: https://www.scottrlarson.com/publications/publication-transi...
What I imagine will happen is the Recall feature will send summaries of user activity back to Microsoft. That way, it's "anonymized" and somehow legal
And you trust them also to not report you to 3 letter agencies when they see "something unusual" ? /s
Financial services, government departments (including things like criminal cases), healthcare - talk about a privacy and confidentiality nightmare.
It should be interesting to hear the inside story about how this was championed inside the company and how it got the greenlight from the higher ups.
They (and the NSA) just want your data.
To clarify: They don't collect your data because they are perverts. They are required to do so.
Recall: Stealing everything you've ever typed or viewed on your own Windows PC
Beyond this, the only feature I will be looking for is how to disable it.
That said, yeah, if the user interacts dumping saved passwords is trivial as well.
It's no wonder collecting this info is a priority. It will be a goldmine for dataminers with the right correlation. Sure right now it's not collected centrally but I'm sure sooner or later there'll be a quick "just click off this tiny T&C update before you continue" crossing our paths.
Also, it means that this confidential info is now in more places than one. It's no longer sufficient to encrypt a file and lay it on a usb stick in the safe.
And it's also there in centralised place ripe for the taking. Not even any need to scan the system to find valuable information.