Microsoft on the other hand… well, I understand they just pulled the recall feature after it was discovered the data wasn’t even encrypted at rest?!
I'm not saying it's not an awful feature, I will disable it as soon as it is installed.
The fact that it's not encrypted at rest really is the least of my concerns (though it does show the lack of care and planning). For this to be a problem, an attacker already has all the necessary accesses to your computer to either get your encryption key or do devastating damage anyway.
> At the risk of sounding like an Apple apologist, Apple has a pretty good (though not perfect) track record for privacy and security.
"Not perfect" is enough to be concerned. I would also not be surprised that their good reputation is more due to their better ability at hiding their data collection and related scandals rather than due to any care for the user.
This Apple AI is not storing anything new, it’s just processing the data that you already stored. As long as they pay close attention to invalidation on the index when things get deleted.
The cloud processing is a little concerning but presumably you will be able to turn it off, and it doesn’t seem much different to using iCloud anyway.
The distinction is made by people who seem hell bent on trashing Microsoft for everything and glorifying everything Apple does.
Here’s an example. I always use a random password when creating accounts for (eg) databases, but not every UI supports this, so I have a little shell script that generates one. I then copy and paste it from the terminal. Once I close the terminal window and copy something else, that password is stored only once.
With recall, it’s now stored permanently. Someone who gets access to my screen history is a step closer to getting into my stuff.
Of course there are workarounds. But the expectation I have around how my screen work informs the actions I take on it.
Here’s another example. I recently clicked on a link from HN and ended up on a page containing explicit images. At work. As soon as I realised what I was looking at, I clicked away.
How long until my visual history is to be interrogated, characterised, and used to find me guilty of looking at inappropriate material in the workplace? Such a system is not going to care about my intentions. Even if I’m not disciplined, I’d certainly be embarrassed.