Recall Exposes Microsoft To Harsh Criticism And Legal Threats

At its Build 2024 developer conference, Microsoft focused on the fact that the new feature saves everything it records locally on the user’s computer, as the company does not see it, and it is not stored on its servers. Which, from its point of view, provides an advanced level of protection.

How does the Recall feature work?

The “Recall” feature on Copilot+ PCs uses artificial intelligence to analyze everything that is recorded from the user’s sessions on his personal computer, so that it provides the user with an intelligent search engine that is able to understand what is recorded. For example, the user can search for the word “black bag.” The Recall feature searches all the footage recorded from using the computer; To extract all visual data that contains a black bag.

The company indicated that it has taken a set of measures to ensure the privacy of content recorded through the service, whether by encrypting it after storing it locally, or by placing a set of control tools in the user’s hand, so that he can turn on or stop the feature at any time, through a button installed in the user’s hand. Task Bar, and you can also specify some sites and applications that the feature is not allowed to record what is happening inside them.

Security concerns

Criticisms directed at the “Recall” feature focused on the fact that it exposes the details of the user’s digital life on his personal computer to be easily violated, if more than one person uses the same computer, as is the case in a large number of homes and companies, as the general public does not care about creating a personal file for each person. Some of them on Windows computers.

The company indicated that if users are keen to make each person commit to logging in to their personal profile when using the same computer, this will ensure that the recording of different users’ use sessions on the computer does not overlap, and thus will preserve their privacy.

Among the criticisms directed at Microsoft’s new feature was that it does not take into account the screen content, and does not use artificial intelligence to hide it if it includes sensitive data such as passwords, bank card data, and PIN numbers.

Legal investigation

Also, a number of specialists criticized the new feature, led by Gene Caltrader, director of Mozilla’s privacy team, who confirmed that the feature is like the user handing over the history of his use of his computer to anyone who knows the device’s password.

The privacy director at Mozilla, the developer of the Firefox browser, warned that this would put users’ privacy at risk, if Microsoft were subject to judicial requests regarding the disclosure of a user’s activity on his computer, or also if Microsoft changed its mind about the method of storing the user’s computer usage history through the new feature. If it wants to use screen recordings for advertising purposes or train its smart models in the future.