Microsoft has started rolling out a.i. to its Windows Operating System for PCs. This “feature” pretends to make it easier to find documents on a computer.
What they should have done is create a reverse index for document retrieval by contents keyword. That proven technology has been around for decades, and doesn’t use a.i.
Microsoft’s tendency to force a.i. unto users of its Windows operating system poses significant threats to privacy and the safety of corporate secrets.
For those of us who have a business to protect, what operating systems help safeguard privacy?
Ok, so this is a Lemmy post that links a r/ailess post that links a r/privacy post that finally links this Ars Technica article.
Why not just link the Ars Technica article to begin with? I don’t think there’s any good reason to link all these separate chained discussions.
This. Please collectively downvote. This sort of thing is the proper use of the downvote button.
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Downvotes are not “I disagree with this person”
A downvote used properly is to bury misinformation, low effort posts, off-topic posts, and as you say - violation of rules or attacks on others.
This is an example of a low effort post that can easily be misinformation because it cannot be verified.
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But the real purpose is to downvote stuff that violates the rules or is immoral in general
Says who? Since when? wtf
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There’s even the cross-post feature!
You linked to a shitty website that blocks hardened browsers instead of the article on Ars. Downvoted.
Please re-post with a link to the actual article.
I’ve been using Linux for near enough a quarter of a century as my main desktop and I haven’t regretted it yet.
Linux today is plenty easy to use today for a non-technical audience, runs with less resources, has global communities, comes in your language and it’s free.
I thought that surely it couldn’t be that bad. But…
“Recall uses Copilot+ PC advanced processing capabilities to take images of your active screen every few seconds,” Microsoft says on its website. “The snapshots are encrypted and saved on your PC’s hard drive. You can use Recall to locate the content you have viewed on your PC using search or on a timeline bar that allows you to scroll through your snapshots.”
“Encrypted”
It must be secure if it is encrypted. The problem with the Microsoft secret storage is that they key is on the disk.
For individuals, yes. For organizations, no. Orgs who know what they’re doing use a HSM for their data encryption. Thus the title of this post is inaccurate.
But from the consumer side, I am absolutely never going to buy a “Copilot Plus” device, whatever that is.
You may not get much of a choice.
Your username is becoming more and more relevant daily
Funny how that possibly happens
So it’s a security camera pointing at your screen, but with AI involved.
Honestly though, this sounds like the kind of thing you could hack together with a shell script and OCR on a *NIX system in an afternoon. Cronjob to take screenshots and run them through OCR, keywords to a database. Add hooks to your window manager to take additional screenshots on relevant events (change desktop, application opens/new window on screen, etc.).
bUt iTs Ai InTeGrAtEd
Soon it’ll be safer to use a Chinese Linux distribution than Windows.
Red Star OS ftw.
That’s northkorean I think.
I know, but NK politically isn’t that far away from PRC.
I recall a statement from an article I’ve read several years ago on the presentation of Will Scott, a professor who has been in NK, at 31C3 2014.
Als sich Scott Root-Zugang verschaffte, fand er ein für Normalnutzer unzugängliches Programm, das die komfortable Einrichtung verschlüsselter Datenträger erlaubte. “Das ist interessant, wenn ihr einen AES-verschlüsselten Datenträger braucht, an dem die NSA garantiert nichts manipuliert hat”, scherzte Scott.
When Scott gained root access, he found a program inaccessible to normal users that allowed the convenient setup of encrypted data carriers. “That’s interesting if you need an AES-encrypted data carrier that the NSA is guaranteed not to have tampered with,” joked Scott.
I know, but NK politically isn’t that far away from PRC.
After the Covid lockdowns there is a saying in China:
We thought that North Korea is our past, but now we know it’s our future.
most likely it will be a group policy which most it departments will turn off anyway.
Don’t be so sure! For a few percents off the price some greedy executives would give anything to Microsoft (and/or others).
Its kind of crazy how that works. Microsoft is blinded my success in many ways.
At public services too, like schools and hospitals, where admins mostly couldn’t care less?
For now…
Seriously though why do they do this to us. Before you know it Windows will be tied to Azure with no local AD.
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To quote Microsoft themselves on the feature;
“No content moderation” is the most important part here, it will happily steal any and all corporate secrets it can see, since Microsoft haven’t given it a way not to.
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Is this windows 11 and up or windows 10 as well?
The Windows 10 equivalent, Timeline, got discontinued in 2021. At this point in time it is unknown whether Microsoft will retrofit Recall into Windows 10. Knowing Microsoft it is safe to assume they’ll try anything for profit.
You can turn off a lot of it with group policy. I would also do testing on the desktop so you can stay ahead of the antifeatures.
Edit:
I like this line:
Recall won’t take snapshots of InPrivate web browsing sessions in Microsoft Edge
My problem is, even if it’s encrypted, only local blah blah blah, if your Microsoft account is compromised, what then?
I worked on account services for msft. The amount of people with compromised accounts is astounding.
