We have seen this game 100 times. Opt in for now and then turned on for everyone 6-12 months later. It’s just a temporary move to handle the bad PR.
Or the other trick of constantly prompting “Turn on / Maybe Later” until people either accidentally accept or just give up to make nagging stop.
registry switch that’ll mysteriously reset itself. we’ve had this shit with countless windows configurations at work that our IT guy has to battle with on the regular.
I’ve had so many people jump down my throat for listing some of the many obviously fucked things Microsoft did on my PC just over the life of Windows 10. (And not that it should matter, but I even paid for Pro).
I turned all their various advertising and spying “features” off through legitimate settings, group policies, whatever, and the list of things that reverted themselves over time was insane.
Can anyone give me examples of times Windows has done this in the past? I mean, I feel like this is true, but I legit can’t think of anything that matches this.
In the last 6 months:
- One Drive reinstalled and turned back on on my personal & work computer multiple times.
- AI Co-pilot added to my machine and enabled “so you can start using it now!” with an obtrusive pinned shortcut on my start bar, to both of the same machines but at different time intervals. Uninstalling is virtually impossible and requires registry mods to 'remove" it. Not even a powers he’ll command can remove it.
I don’t want, or need, this add-on garbage.
Opt-in does not matter, if I message or email someone who has it on, my personal data has been collected without my knowledge or consent.
This shouldnt have been built in the first place, it’s irresponsible
This raises an excellent point not considered. This goes for all texts as well if the other person uses the “your phone” app. Discord, matrix, signal, telegram etc are all compromised by this existing on a system.
Will my browser’s “private mode” be respected or it is going to store every inappropriate thing I search?
Are password managers safe? How about bank security questions? How often are those actaully obfuscated. The last 4 digits of social security numbers are usually unobfuscated, which is also what a lot of intuitions (stupidly) use to verify your ID over the phone. What if I want to look at the PDF of my tax documents?
What if my HR manager has this enabled and starts viewing PDFs containing private information about employees, payroll data, finances and whatever else is sellable on the dark web.
How about govermnet data? Sure maybe the pentagon IT staff will completely block it, but what about local gov committee ABC that’s collecting voter information?
That type of data is valuable enough that it will be targeted regardless of what protection MS attempts. Based on the fact they didnt bother encytping the data from the start, my faith is low.
The implications of this are insane.
That’s true of any malware on your contact’s computer or an unsecure server, though. That is not specific or novel to this feature.
(I’m not saying I like this feature, or think it’s a good idea. I don’t, and it’s not)
I maintain one baremetal Windows install that gets fairly regular use. It’s on a major OEM business class workstation with a legit Windows 10 pro license.
Recently, I had to wipe and reset and goddamn do they try and trick you into choosing all the worst spyware settings AND even if you successfully duck and weave past them, they’ll just cheat and enable them, or reinstall shit like co-pilot during an update.
They just made me sign into that shitty M365 app to install a legit subscription of Office, and on the next reboot, it converted the local user account into an online user account.
Make no mistake, Recall is going to be enabled by hook, or by crook, for the vast majority of Windows 11 users in due time. No matter how many times they disable it, or opt out.
Yup. We’re back to the old days where Microsoft didn’t give a damn and enabled things by default.
It’ll take less than a decade before they get sued, yet again. By then, the penalty will be <5% of what they’ve made, but the merry go round will circle back and start all over.
Too late Microsoft, I jumped into the Linux pool and the water is fine.
“we will change nothing but announce it like we did”
