Microsoft says it has “listened to feedback” following a privacy row over a new tool which takes regular screenshots of users’ activity.

It was labelled a potential “privacy nightmare” by critics when it was unveiled in May 2024 - prompting the tech giant to postpone its release. It now plans to relaunch the artificial intelligence (AI) powered tool in November on its new CoPilot+ computers.

[…]

When it initially announced the tool at its developer conference in May, Microsoft said it used AI “to make it possible to access virtually anything you have ever seen on your PC”, and likened it to having photographic memory. It said Recall could search through a users’ past activity, including their files, photos, emails and browsing history.

[…]

But critics quickly raised concerns, given the quantity of sensitive data the system would harvest, with one expert labelling it a potential “privacy nightmare."

[…]

[Pavan Davuluri, Microsoft’s corporate vice president of Windows and devices says] that “Windows offers tools to help you control your privacy and customise what gets saved for you to find later”.

However a technical blog about it states that “diagnostic data” from the tool may be shared with the firm depending on individual privacy settings.

[Microsoft says in a blog post that users can remove Recall entirely by using the optional features settings in Windows.]

  • Negligent_Embassy
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    3 hours ago

    If you know what you’re doing yes (not guaranteed to work in all games), but you’re always at constant threat of being potentially banned.

    The info is hard to find but I assure you tons of people play anticheat games in VMs all the time. I personally avoid those games so I don’t know the specifics of all the tricks they do to hide the VM.

    Being it’s a VM I could see some people just restoring from a template if they get banned and not really caring. No way to be hardware banned afaik.

    This VM detection and VM anti detection is a reguarly evolving arms race, and some games invest a LOT more effort into staying on top of it than others.