You may have already heard about Windows 11‘s Microsoft Recall, which continuously records one’s activities in a series of screenshots and activity logs. It is aimed at helping out users by answering questions related to their recent activity. While the activity logs and screenshots might be helpful to you (probably asking for a password you’ve forgotten) it could also pose security risks.
In the latest news, Jaime Teevan, chief scientist and technical fellow at Microsoft Research, was asked to talk about the data privacy concerns surrounding Microsoft Recall at the US university’s Institute for Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence’s fifth-anniversary conference. However, she seemed to be unwilling to get to the point.
Microsoft Research chief scientist on how Microsoft is dealing with user data
Erik Brynjolfsson, director of the Stanford Digital Economy Lab, started by mentioning that there was “kind of a backlash against all the privacy challenges” around Microsoft’s new Recall feature. Brynjolfsson urged to know more about “both the pluses and minuses of using all that data and some of the risks that create and also some of the opportunities.”
“Yeah, and so it’s a great question, Erik. This has come up throughout the morning as well – the importance of data. And this AI revolution that we’re in right now is really changing the way we understand data. Microsoft generally helps large enterprises manage their data, create data, share data, and that data is really something that makes the business of work different in the context of generative AI.” the Microsoft official responded. “But of course, we are rethinking what data means and how we use it, how we value it, how it gets used.”
Observing her unwillingness to get to the point, Brynjolfsson further asked “Is it stored locally?” He shared his concerns about data privacy. “So suppose I activate Recall, and I don’t know if I can, but when you have something like that available, I would be worried about all my personal files going up into the cloud, Microsoft, or whatever. Do you have it kept locally?”
Teevan finally confirmed that the screenshots and activity logs are stored locally. “So Recall is a feature that captures information. It’s a local Windows functionality, nothing goes into the cloud, everything’s stored locally.”
While the information is stored locally, it might not be a complete solution to the problem. The saved files could also come in handy for a system intruder. The files stored in Recall’s unencrypted SQLite database can still be extracted and accessed, which might not be ideal for certain scenarios.
Microsoft Recall is turned on by default in Windows 11 Copilot + PCs. However, you can disable the functionality from Settings.
(Via)
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