281–290 of 572 posts
Would love to know if any product research was done on this at all, or if it was a mandate from someone high up in Microsoft. I cannot imagine they'd go very long talking to potential users without hearing the exact same fears they seem to be surprised about today.
It's interesting to compare this to the Chrome/Safari/Edge browsing history, which is stored in an unencrypted SQLite database, and tracks what you do for the last 90 days. It's just a bit less visual, Incognito/Private modes work, and some users clear it more often. But a whole lot of the surveillance attacks people imagine about Recall apply just the same to the browser. I think it's the "little brother" casual att…
Your browsing history is unlikely to contain personal information, secrets, porn images etc. And if you use Chrome, they get your full browsing history by default. I get your point, but Microsoft's Recall can capture anything onscreen - emails, personal info, porn, passwords and the like. And it feels, bizarrely for 2024, that little thought has gone into privacy or security.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Your browsing history is unlikely to contain personal information, secrets, porn images etc. And if you use Chrome, they get your full browsing history by default. I get your point, but Microsoft's Recall can capture anything onscreen - emails, personal info, porn, passwords and the like. And it feels, bizarrely for 2024, that little thought has gone into privacy or security.
It's analogous to phone call metadata vs. the contents of the phone calls.
In the case of the phone, one simply sees recipient of call, duration etc, regardless of how much information was exchanged. The phone I'm calling is arguably analogous to the server I request a page from, in the metadata context.
I'd argue browser history is significantly richer in some regards due to this. It's not unheard of for user identifiers to appear in URL paths either - try visiting https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id= user name>... In my Chrome, that's instantly in the history file with my username.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The concept itself has value, but the ethical and legal concerns are severe, not to mention the issue of Recall also capturing sensitive stuff like passwords. Microsoft, Google, Apple - everyone is scared shitless of some AI startup kicking their nutsacks, and is launching products that should have gone through extensive ethics discussions beforehand in a matter of weeks.
passwords are the last of it, think about women inquiring about abortions in states where they aren't legal. Or people trying to get away from an abusive partner, on and on it goes.
[1] https://www.npr.org/2022/07/11/1110391316/google-data-aborti...
Maybe a bit off-topic, but I sure wish they'd do this for OneDrive! I installed Windows for personal use for the first time recently (although I use it exclusively at work) and it drove me ABSOLUTELY BONKERS that my home drive was mapping to C:\Users\atribecalledqst\OneDrive. What I hated the most was that the File Explorer just calls the folders in there e.g. "Documents" and "Pictures" without showing the full path.…
Dear OS writers: Internet access is not always guaranteed or reliable. Please do not assume that the cloud is a viable solution for every user. I ran into this on my phone awhile back. I knew I would be out of service for some time but had some PDFs I needed to reference. So I downloaded them to "files". Que surprise when I later go to look up a value and there's a little cloud with a down arrow button next to the PD…
It's interesting to compare this to the Chrome/Safari/Edge browsing history, which is stored in an unencrypted SQLite database, and tracks what you do for the last 90 days. It's just a bit less visual, Incognito/Private modes work, and some users clear it more often. But a whole lot of the surveillance attacks people imagine about Recall apply just the same to the browser. I think it's the "little brother" casual att…
Does your browser history store pictures of your family?
Maybe a bit off-topic, but I sure wish they'd do this for OneDrive! I installed Windows for personal use for the first time recently (although I use it exclusively at work) and it drove me ABSOLUTELY BONKERS that my home drive was mapping to C:\Users\atribecalledqst\OneDrive. What I hated the most was that the File Explorer just calls the folders in there e.g. "Documents" and "Pictures" without showing the full path.…
> requiring that users prove their identity via its Microsoft Hello authentication function any time they either enable Recall or access its data, So now I need MS permission to read my own data stored on my own machine? Insane.