Microsoft recall

Homer J

Author Level

Ethical hacker Alex Hagenah has launched a tool, called TotalRecall, that shows how anyone with enough know-how and the right tools could steal the recalls saved on a Windows machine and access that data, encryption-free, on a target device. According to Hagenah, whose work was reported on earlier by Wired, he analyzed Windows Recall and found that the tool -- which takes screen captures of a Windows machine every five seconds -- stores the data completely unencrypted on the user's computer.

"TotalRecall copies the databases and screenshots and then parses the database for potentially interesting artifacts," Hagenah wrote in a GitHub posting about TotalRecall. "You can define dates to limit the extraction as well as search for strings (that were extracted via Recall OCR) of interest. There is no rocket science behind all this."
 

Homer J

Author Level
i actually dont know the point of the recall feature to consumers, its not adding anything of worth that cant be done already via bookmarking or off hand remembering, i cant see how creating snapshots of everything you do apart from spying is adding anything, people have got to this point without much of a problem.
 

BlessedSquirrel

We love you Ukraine
This is a really good podcast generally on the AI hype train and how truly redundant it is certainly in the PC component space and generally for home users


For me it all comes down to marketing, not just AI, but general marketing globally. Currently there just aren’t enough robust boundaries to protect consumers, companies, political parties, charities, you name it, they can manipulate any figures to their own benefit even when it’s flat out lies with barely any penalty other than perhaps a “formal” slap on the wrist or minor few thousand dollar fine in extreme cases that has zero impact on that entities operating profits.
 
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BlessedSquirrel

We love you Ukraine

TonyCarter

VALUED CONTRIBUTOR
It's here...and not just for the much-feted 'AI PCs'...and it's integrated at a system level, so removing it will 'break' your File Explorer.

There may be a way to disable it though...

To Disable Recall in 24H2(Removing it breaks explorer):
  • Open Settings
  • Select Privacy & security
  • Choose Recall & snapshots
  • Toggle off Recall
Maybe it isn't in Windows Pro, as I can't find it in my settings 🥳
 
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BlessedSquirrel

We love you Ukraine
It's here...and not just for the much-feted 'AI PCs'...and it's integrated at a system level, so removing it will 'break' your File Explorer.

There may be a way to disable it though...

To Disable Recall in 24H2(Removing it breaks explorer):
  • Open Settings
  • Select Privacy & security
  • Choose Recall & snapshots
  • Toggle off Recall
Bye bye, windows bye 🙋‍♂️
 

TonyCarter

VALUED CONTRIBUTOR
I'm still on 23H2, so I've got all this nonsense still to come!
My work laptop was upgraded to Windows 11 on Monday morning, and it's still 'optimising' everything 3 days after it started.

The main install is done, but there's update after update after update, and the enterprise 'security' software is just making everything run so slowly whilst it's doing it (e.g. the 3 main processes are using over 50% of available CPU and the fan is on constantly).
 

AccidentalDenz

Lord of Steam
I'm tempted to just upgrade to 24H2 now while I'm actively thinking about disabling Recall, instead of waiting for whenever my PC decides to update and I'll have probably forgotten about Recall. Windows Update is telling me there's no active updates at the moment, but I'm aware I can force the update with the installation tool.
 
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