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I personally see a future where employers mandate the use of Recall and will audit employees’ activity for “compliance” purposes, to quash dissent, etc. I don’t like this future. (Employers already have the legal right to do this, but the implementation is neither commonly available nor commonly accepted, so Recall may nudge the needle on societal acceptance.)
In this future, you’d be stopped at the border and asked to hand over your Recall data and sanctioned based on political articles you read etc etc, imagine whatever slippery slope you like here.
You know the thing about medical headlines where it turns out you can broadly tack “in mice” on the end to get a truer version? For statements like this you can usually add “in the US” and come away a little wiser. This is absolutely not the case everywhere else.
No?
Well, those arguments flip the narrative. No one has to justify their privacy; invasion of privacy needs to be justified - and, when warranted, scope needs to be enforced.
In case anyone needs an analogue: when paying, you don't give the seller access to all of your money. They justify a particular amount and if you agree, they get the right to only that.
With money, we tend to call folks who take more than warranted "robbers" or "thieves". I think society would be in a better state of we viewed invasion of privacy as negatively.
If this is tame compared to a few years from now, then the path we travel to get there will be lined with these types of implementations. Now is the time to push back before it gets to that point.
As for the freaky stuff I do: talking to friends, family, coworkers, banking and financial transactions. I don't use it, but online healthcare is becoming more and more prevalent. I search for things that are of interest and impact to me and my family.
Careful you don't take the echo chamber for the world.
Reality is most people don't care about digital privacy, and more over do care about getting to recall (pun intended) what they were doing at an earlier time.
Both the benefits and concerns are real, we shall see if the furor in a small corner of the tech world is representative of anything in the wider world at large.
It's not panic, it's feedback and pushback. If we didn't have people doing this research, and trying out the not-released software to find these issues, we'd very likely be panicking when it was released and being forced on us.
Upload a months old browsing history without deleting any entries, not even the private browsing ones.
If I'd hear your argument in person I'd ask you for your unlocked phone.
that's the mild version
an abused spouse looks for help and is beaten or murdered for it
that's the less mild version
It just clicked in my brain. What I haven't been able to articulate about why I'm so anxious about #Windows Recall. I'm sure others have already gotten to where I am.
It's worse than "a system that tracks everything you do" and stores that info in a basic database that could be easily compromised. It's worse than a nanny surveillance tool for companies to spy on their employees.
It's inescapable.
It doesn't matter if I make a dozen "how to disable recall" tutorials. The second YOUR data shows up on someone ELSE'S screen, it's in THEIR recall database.
It won't matter if you're a master #security expert specialist. You can't account for EVERY other computer you've ever interacted with. If a family member looks up an old email with your personal data in it, your data is now at risk.
If THEIR system is compromised YOUR data is at risk.
I just went from "vague feeling of unease" to "actively writing templates to canvas elected officials, regulators, and attorneys general."
Discussing homosexuality in Russia or critising the government in China. Not everyone lives a stressless cushy life like yours.
My password manager has a "reveal" button, for scenarios in which I have to (for example) type an iCloud password into a kid's device.
I'd rather dislike having an unencrypted OCR copy of that password sitting around.
If you think this is implausible or paranoid, I would recommend reading more history of the 20th Century in totalitarian regimes.
As for not having anything to hide would you mind providing your last 10 banking transactions? Details on your last 5 sexual partners? Porn viewing habits? Medical information? You're deepest thoughts and fears?
And of course there is always the fact that right now you may be doing something seemingly harmless that due to future circumstances you will need to hide.
- "Did or did you not visit coldbloodedmurder.com on the night of 7/5/2026? Answer the question with yes or no."
- "But that's just a ..."
- "Yes or no!"
There's too much harm that can be done with all that information.
are you doing anything freaky at home? are you molesting children, synthesizing drugs, assembling IEDs, expressing forbidden opinions, thinking forbidden thoughts?
no? then surely you won't mind a few cameras installed in every room - we promise to share the footage only with our trusted partners, advertisers and every intelligence agency under the sun.
It could be as tame as emailing my grandmother. Frankly, it's no one else's business but mine.
Recall is essentially the same as recording what you can see with your own eyeballs and what you are thinking and doing when you are on your system.
In a couple of updates, Microsoft will likely be able to recall data on any screen anywhere… you make a call to your insurance company, Recall will know all of the same info that the insurance agent can see from their screen.
You visit your therapist, then after you leave they write up notes on their Windows computer with Recall then somehow your insurance rates go up the next month.
When I was a scoundrel hacker in the 2000’s (I am not proud of it), the first thing I’d do is install keyloggers and screen grabbers - and let me tell you, although I never did anything with the data I can tell you categorically that it would have been pretty bad for these people had I doxxed the content. These people were probably the same kinds of people who would argue your kind of point, but it’s only because they haven’t thought about it enough to fully realise the damage that can be done.
Now when hackers break into a system, they will be able to grab that recall. Partners will be able to do it. Trolls will be able to.
Just like the power trip I was on, Microsoft are also on a power trip, except they go all in and have the backing of the NSA. They do not care about your privacy, they just want control/power/dominance and money.
Doxxing is about to hit the big time with this. Soon enough, you’ll find more than just a celebs full recall on a the darkweb you’ll have your friends and family looking over your own recall history when it gets leaked from some other massive malware scam.
File cryptor ransomware will soon be called Recall ransomware.
I think you are a psychopath if you don’t think long and hard on moving away from Microsoft inmediately.