Microsoft Recall - Huge Security And Privacy Risk

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Microsoft Recall - Huge Security And Privacy Risk

Microsoft has announced a new AI-powered feature for Windows 11 called 'Recall,' which records everything you do on your PC and lets you search through your historical activities. Essentially unrequested, preinstalled spyware built into new Windows.

Recall works by taking screenshots of your active window every few seconds, building snapshots of what you do over time. Microsoft says the feature will require at least a 256 GB hard drive with 50 GB of space available to store approximately three months of snapshots, but this can be increased by allocating more storage.

The Recall snapshots are analysed by Copilot+ PCs and an AI model to extract information from screenshots that is then added to a new Windows index. 

This index allows users to search for information using human language queries and pull up snapshots related to the query. In these snapshots, information, such as URLs, text, and images, can be interacted with, making it easier to find and use historical information.

You can control what information and apps Recall can capture, and Microsoft says the AI works at the hardware level and keeps all data stored locally, never shared with the cloud or Microsoft.

While Microsoft states that no data will be sent to their servers, one concern immediately comes to mind with this feature: how this recorded data will be locally secured on Windows devices.

If a threat actor gains local access to a device, would they be able to access this data or send it to their own computers to analyse the information offline for sensitive data.

Furthermore, Microsoft admits that the feature performs no content moderation, meaning it will screenshot everything it sees in active windows, including credentials, banking information, and other confidential information.

Disable Recall on Windows 11

Check If Recall Is ON or OFF

Open Windows Terminal as Administrator. To do this, Right-Click on the Start Button, and select the Terminal (Admin) Option.

In the Command Prompt Profile, type, or cut and paste this command: 

Dism /Online /Get-Featureinfo /Featurename:Recall

if it shows RECALL Disable. It’s all good.

But if it shows RECALL Enable.

type, or cut and paste this command to disable it:

Dism /Online /Disable-Feature /Featurename:Recall

Restart the PC and Recall will be disable.