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To stop the malware, we became the malware.
But also we didn’t stop the malware.
Recall records everything users do on their PC, including activities in apps, communications in live meetings, and websites visited for research. Despite encryption and local storage, the new feature raises privacy concerns for certain Windows users.
Gee, you think??!
I loved this:
At first glance, the Recall feature seems like it may set the stage for potential gross violations of user privacy. Despite reassurances from Microsoft, that impression persists for second and third glances as well.
Definitely no dystopian sci-fi that applies here.
Sounds about right. Now, hands up, who didn’t see this coming?
🧍
I’ve seen a few of these insane AI privacy violations by Microsoft today - I’m assuming from the same event. In every article, Microsoft insists “its okay cause all the data is on the user’s device”.
First of all, I don’t trust a word they say. Second, I’m sure there is some other service by them that would pick these files up and send them to Microsoft anyway. Third, unless the AI is running locally, they need to send that data to their servers for this to function. Fourth, I guarantee this “local” promise will get quietly dropped the millisecond they think they can get away with it. Fifth, these tech companies have been acting in such bad faith they should be hit with an insane amount of regulations at the very least.
I’m generally not against AI, but Microsoft absolutely cannot be trusted with any of this.
records everything
It always has.
Having logs of opened apps and crashes is NOT the same as scraping everything including content. By making stupid quippy jokes as if this is normal, you at best spread ignorance and tacit acceptance, and at worst spread disinformation.
Here is a 101 on windows telemetry data for you: https://www.makeuseof.com/how-windows-11-collects-data/
360: https://privacy.microsoft.com/en-us/data-collection-office
If you use other Microsoft services, they could have your email, exact location and even all the passwords you save for starters.
At the end of the day, you simply don’t know all the data they collect and can easily be much more than you trivialized. In the privacy agreements, you will see a ton of “optional” collecting which we all know is turned on by default.
If you think that is still all bullshit, if there is data stored somewhere other than your own PC, it’s not your data. If “AI” can reference your exact history, this gets 100x worse than it has in the past.
It’s all about the money: https://about.ads.microsoft.com/en/tools/performance/audience-targeting
Yes, if you use Microsoft cloud services, OFC your data goes to Microsoft. No duh. You’re speaking like all the people who are surprised publicly accessible data is being fed in to LLMs and other “AI” math blenders.
Corporations don’t care about an individual’s copyrights (or privacy). They only care about the copyrights (or privacy) of those that can sue them in to oblivion. If you haven’t noticed, many corporations have enough money to make the US government second-guess opening up cases against them, let alone individuals they fuck over as a matter of course these days.
We’re already beyond fucked. If you want to keep things private, don’t go near ANY corporate driven services. Any and all interaction is logged and sold for aggregation even before all this “AI” BS.
Wait.
You are deflecting. You trivialized the data collection that is happening. I gave a fairly good list of what Microsoft collects which is a bit beyond your poo-poo’d description. I only added cloud services and AI as part of the same problem and you latched on to that.
We’re already beyond fucked.
Yeah, bud. That was the point of my quip, now kindly fuck off and go rage on someone else.
Your angle on this is hilarious. Keep assuming I’m not making the same point. This is quite amusing.
I’m saying, “you’re surprised by this?” and went on to describe how the entire system fucks you mercilessly, and you STILL think you’re making the greater point? Pathetic, my dude. Do better.
You know what it was before the internet and “reality” tv? It was pitch meetings, shady contracts, and internships. They’re all avenues for corpos to steal ideas on the cheap. The “AI” stuff is just an extension of the same old corpo greed that is literally centuries old, but I don’t want to write you a historic dissertation on greed in economic trends…
Bai. You got issues man.
Yes, I have many issues with greed throughout history, let alone just what’s demonstrable through economic policies.
What bothers me is that you do not appear to have as many issues. Sad.
Microsoft says that the Recall index remains local and private on-device, encrypted in a way that is linked to a particular user’s account. “Recall screenshots are only linked to a specific user profile and Recall does not share them with other users, make them available for Microsoft to view, or use them for targeting advertisements. Screenshots are only available to the person whose profile was used to sign in to the device,” Microsoft says.
Users can pause, stop, or delete captured content and can exclude specific apps or websites. Recall won’t take snapshots of InPrivate web browsing sessions in Microsoft Edge or DRM-protected content
Optional local feature. Of course the thread acts like eggs of the universe.
Ok, but now picture on day 1, MS pops a little message box up on every computer with it installed that says, “Enable advanced functionality?” with a teeny tiny link to a long legal document that, somewhere in it, says that actually with advanced features turned on, they do upload all your data.
Because companies do that, all the time. It allows you to both have press releases saying “we collect no data, we love privacy!” but then actually collect and sell data on like 95% of your customers.
Point out when MS has done this.
Heres an article about them doing it last year, specifically around how much of your data they can use for AI training, so it’s exactly the same thing. The article also mentions several other companies doing it around the same time. https://venturebeat.com/ai/microsoft-changes-services-agreement-to-add-restrictions-for-ai-offerings/
Here’s another article from 12 years ago about MS changes the ToS of their cloud storage policies to allow them to use all your stored files for advertising and “new features”. https://www.csoonline.com/article/545804/microsoft-subnet-microsoft-raises-privacy-issues-with-tweaked-tos-to-share-data-across-the-cloud.html
I can also tell you from my personal experience of using dozens of enterprise MS applications that they all constantly pester you to set up a cloud account, log into it, and link all of your data and activities into this account. In the last few months, every one of them has added an “optional” co-pilot feature that intrusively tries to get me to use it at every opportunity.
