Security Researcher Calls Windows 11 AI 'Recall' Screenshotting Feature a Disaster [Updated]

[MJaP]

How much quicker is your SSD going to fail if you're writing to it every 5 seconds? An SSD has a lifespan of around 50,000 - 100,000 read/write cycles, and if you're on your computer for 4 hours and this feature is running then you've made an extra 7,200 writes to the SSD. I know SSDs are large and the screenshot sizes are small, but you're going to start wearing out SSD pages (SSD version of a sector on a hard drive) eventually.

It reminds me of Vista's endless accessing of my hard drive as it defragged and indexed seemly constantly.

 

[JapanApple]

Knowing Microsoft’s history, I won’t be surprised if this feature was somehow turned on with each subsequent windows update and users have to manually check and ensure it’s disabled by default every time they log in.

good point and it happened in past updates on all platforms. But again, you can turn it off.

 

[NEPOBABY]

This should be interesting. Hopefully Microsoft gets the security figured out before launch. It will be interesting to know how much of a risk this really is for the average user.

Microsoft‘s clients are intelligence agencies, including countries that are reallly…

 

[applepotato666]

Yes, Windows is a crap show, but I think it's currently a beta. Surely they'll figure it out.

 

[cjsuk]

Yes, Windows is a crap show, but I think it's currently a beta. Surely they'll figure it out.

I worked with Microsoft as a developer for about 20 years. No, they won't work it out. This half baked turd will slither into production and they will try and make the bad things go away with marketing.

 

[ThunderSkunk]

Awesome. Windows 7 here we come!

 

[Squuiid]

Love Kevin. If you’re into IT security I highly recommend following him on Mastodon.
@GossiTheDog@cyberplace.social

 

[Poot Windbreaker]

This might be the wrong place to ask, but is it possible to permanently remove any of the new copilot features? There are plenty of tools or scripts (win11debloat is an easy example) that can remove “non-removable” parts of the OS, like OneDrive or Scheduling Manager. I have an M1 MBA, and was looking to diversify to maybe a Legion 7i or 9i. I really don’t like 11, but what can you do? (Win7 was peak windows imho!)

 

[tomekwsrod]

I love this feature. And I would like to be able to enable it and disable/clear when needed.
I need this feature for work. What a time saver this might be.

 

[.wojtek]

Hey, what could be the harm, right? It's Microsoft! I trust them.

Them. Them.

I. I. I trust. Trrrrrrrrr.

?SYNTAX ERROR IN LINE 39737

GENERAL FAILURE READING DRIVE C. ABORT, RETRY, FAIL?

Thank you for using BillGPT. Goodbye.

TBH nowadays I would trust Microsoft more than Google (and I was Google fan boy like a decade ago)... And apple... they have their share or ef ups, and given complete walled garden nature of the ecosystem they can more easily pull "solid software" gimmick if they don't have to deal with legacy or myriad of hardware variants... though, even with that benefit apple is recently having more and more odd software bugs..

I do hope that ARM on pc will take off and I will switch to Linux

 

[rikki_t]

still a long way to go to beat Apple, in iOS your deleted pics survive an OS upgrade or even a reinstall

 

[cjsuk]

still a long way to go to beat Apple, in iOS your deleted pics survive an OS upgrade or even a reinstall

This is actually wrong. They don't survive a reinstall.

 

[JippaLippa]

Linux looks quite interesting, all of a sudden!
Jokes aside, I only use windows for gaming these days, therefore I'm not too concerned about this.
If I used Windows as my Work machine, though, I'd be concerned.

 

[uacd]

Windows has been useless pile of crap since version 8 at least. I have migrated to Mac OS X straight from Windows XP. Recently when I tried Windows 11 again for some time my experience was total disaster, I wasted 3 days to disable all the spyware, trash and slowdown functionality. On macOS it takes 15 minutes or less.

First thing that “meets” you in Windows is f…ing Cortana/Bing symbiosis that logs your EVERY SEARCH QUERRY.

The second problem is how slow Windows is. They have introduced some new fonts that it is almost impossible to look at text without having eye strain.

I would say we live in world of total injustice when every new game is made for Windows. These stupid game developing companies just strengthen the monopoly of Microsoft whose only goal now is to collect and sell data.

Obviously there are not so many people who will buy Windows PC just for the cause of gaming. People work on these computers too, surf the web occasionally

 

[amaze1499]

I won't touch Windows from now on.

 

[CyberBob859]

I had one. 386SX with 12MB Ram. With a trick i ran even win98 on it. Anyway... Any I5 with 8 gigs of ram will run win11. It just depends, what you need the pc for. I switches few years ago to Linux; better support, runs perfectly, for my stuff more than enough. Gamers will need something else. If you depend on ms programs, you need to buy, what they say. I personally think, the market is changing. Linux is growing fast. ARM is getting stronger. Hell - even a Raspberry 5 is doing a great job for "regular" users.

Too late - they drank the Kool-Aid too:

Even the Raspberry Pi is getting in on AI

You can’t get away from AI on devices.

www.theverge.com

 

[Jamie0003]

I agree. And thank you for saying it.

Seriously, MS What The Fragmented Drive were you thinking with Recall?!?

Don’t forget the forced bitlocker encryption, which is going to cause grandmas everywhere to lose all their photos

and ads in the start menu.

 

[MTShipp]

I think I will stick with my XP machine a little while longer, the insecurity of this CoPilot makes me too concerned /s

Seriously, over the last couple of years I have been weaning myself off of Google (Gmail, Search, YouTube, YouTubeTV, etc.) and trying to do more within MacOS and Linux vs Windows. A few last hurdles then I can drop Microsoft completely.

 

[SmugMaverick]

imagine if Apple did this

Yeah imagine... like imagine if they listened to users Siri recordings without permission, let china hack airdrop for 5 years or kept deleted photos without permission... and then through their own stupidity, it was revealed to the public.

Imagine if people weren't so quick to forget Apples nasty little secrets.

 

[MilaM]

The line between useful and creepy is very fine with this service. But to be honest, I could see today's Apple "inventing" something like this as well.

 

[Delivered]

Yes, Windows is a crap show, but I think it's currently a beta. Surely they'll figure it out.

Sarcasm? 😂

 

[Delivered]

Yeah imagine... like imagine if they listened to users Siri recordings without permission, let china hack airdrop for 5 years or kept deleted photos without permission... and then through their own stupidity, it was revealed to the public.

Imagine if people weren't so quick to forget Apples nasty little secrets.

Good point. Fair. I guess it feels worse to let them. In through the front door then have them sneak in from the back.

 

[Radeon85]

How the hell can they think this is a good feature?. What if I happen to have a password visible on screen for a moment and recall screenshots it. This feature is a security disaster.

 

[wanha]

For the endless voices crying "Apple is behind on AI", I sincerely hope that mature voices in Cupertino prevail and Apple isn't rushing into AI with poorly thought-out implementations like most of their competitors.

Being first is seldom an indicator or requirement for success.

When it comes to AI, we're in the first mile of a marathon.

 

[imnotkleenex]

Funny, because the features in Copilot + PCs are exactly why I might not get a Mac as my next purchase as I feel like Mac OS isn’t really doing anything new and the « AI stuff » like some like to smash has been incredible for the user experience and is something that Apple is severely lacking imo.