this post was submitted on 28 May 2024
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Microsoft's Windows Recall feature is attracting controversy before even venturing out of preview.

Microsoft said in its FAQs that its snapshotting feature will vacuum up sensitive information: "Recall does not perform content moderation. It will not hide information such as passwords or financial account numbers. That data may be in snapshots stored on your device, especially when sites do not follow standard internet protocols like cloaking password entry."

Mozilla's Chief Product Officer Steve Teixeira told The Register: "Mozilla is concerned about Windows Recall. From a browser perspective, some data should be saved, and some shouldn't.

Jake Moore, Global Cybersecurity Advisor at ESET, noted that while the feature is not on by default, its use "opens up another avenue for criminals to attack."

Moore warned that "users should be mindful of allowing any content to be analysed by AI algorithms for a better experience."

Cybersecurity expert Kevin Beaumont was scathing in his assessment of the technology, writing: "In essence, a keylogger is being baked into Windows as a feature."

AI expert Gary Marcus was blunter: "F^ck that. I don't want my computer to spy on everything I ever do."

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[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 month ago

What exactly can recall see? Is it just what's on screen?

Because, if I'm like most people when I type my password, I keep my passwords hashed on the screen as I type it. (i'm using anything but Windows since 2016)

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 month ago

Hopefully this will get more people into looking at Linux as their OS.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 month ago

Even if we believe them and all the data stays local to your machine, what's to stop your average bit of malware accessing it?

So now not only is any data compromised going forward, but all your data going back as well.

[–] [email protected] 16 points 1 month ago (1 children)

literally every cybersecurity expert is saying this would be a bad idea that could be used maliciously by anyone. I really hope the executives listen to them.

yeah, sure, it's supposedly encrypted and supposedly stored locally exclusively and supposedly not turned on by default, but even if that does turn out to be true, scammers can use it with remote desktop to snoop, anyone who plants a RAT on your system could look through that shit too.

[–] [email protected] 16 points 1 month ago

"I really hope the executives listen to them."

Oh man. Needed a good laugh tonight. Thanks champ.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Microsoft's bread and butter has been selling and servicing to businesses.

So with that in mind, the hell are they thinking? Windows 10 end of life guarantees that businesses specifically will have to switch. Then the next option in line is one that will by default vacuum up all your proprietary information to feed into an AI, effectively "copyright laundering" it?.

Even if there's ways to deactivate the feature, the non-tech savvy managers will just go off of the headlines and the tech savvy ones will recognize the security risk. And government/healthcare computer might just fork Linux into a non-open source version.

Ironically it feels like they're focusing too much on consumers (on extorting them) and shooting themselves in the foot for their business clientele.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 month ago

Ironically it feels like they’re focusing too much on consumers (on extorting them) and shooting themselves in the foot for their business clientele.

It's like they saw all the shittiest things about apple products and said "game on motherfuckers!"

imagine how many people are going to get doxxed by this feature.

[–] [email protected] 28 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Seems like all hospitals and medical providers would need to avoid the OS in order to remain in compliance with HIPAA.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 month ago

I give it two weeks, tops.

[–] [email protected] 14 points 1 month ago (1 children)

No one here mentioning this will be a gold mine for Malware makers and hackers.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

The actual article does mention it.

[–] [email protected] 29 points 1 month ago (4 children)

Total Recall? Get your ass to Linux!

[–] [email protected] -4 points 1 month ago (1 children)

malware on linux is surprisingly common, more common than most people realize.

in fact, for every variety of malware for windows, there's a version of it for many linux distros too

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 month ago

Most malware that targets linux goes for server stuff, since those are the most valuable targets. End user linux, which barely hits 3% usage, isn't a common target because there's not much to be gained.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 month ago

Honestly if you do truly value having control over your privacy take this advice to heart. There are so many good Linux options now that are even easier than Windows to install. All it takes is a few clicks. You can even choose which UI you prefer in many cases. All those previous barriers to entry no longer exist.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 month ago (1 children)

I've tried to get into linux 4 different times now. Over the coarst of 15 years.

I have no idea what I'm doing.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Try BazziteOS

It's meant for gaming, but I find it's so feature complete that's it's great for non-gaming purposes.

Somehow it even works better on my monitor than Windows, since I can actually control my brightness from an applet rather than having to use my monitor buttons.

[–] [email protected] 15 points 1 month ago (5 children)

Not OP, but I feel like every time I come across a thread like this, someone is recommending a different version of Linux. It makes it really difficult to decide, and I can't exactly just "try out" Linux on my computer the same way I could try out other programs.

Yes, I could install it on a thumb drive, but that's not persistent, so I couldn't try it out for more than a few hours. Takes longer than that to decide to completely switch OSes.

[–] [email protected] -3 points 1 month ago (1 children)

And not just that, but each distro of linux has its own quirks and each one is compatible with a different list of brands of hardware. you could brick your system if you install the wrong distro on the wrong hardware, like down to the bios

And contrary to popular belief, LINUX CAN GET MALWARE JUST AS EASILY AS WINDOWS CAN.

With windows, there's a 30 year history of malware infections and there's several good choices for windows based antivirus programs, and three amazing ones. The people who work at those antivirus companies know how vulnerable windows is and so they're always working on improving their software...at least the good ones are, but those same antivirus programs on linux don't have nearly as much stuff in them to fight against APTs most linux versions of great antivirus programs like comodo and kaspersky are gutted down to just a regular antivirus with heuristics, no zero-day threat protection at all, you're completely dependent on how fast the new malware can get added to the blacklist.

But on windows, if you use comodo and know how to configure it and understand that it will never pop up unless something might be wrong, you're always prepared for zero-day threats and even zero-hour threats.

Linux used to be super secure, simply because there were so few people using it or even aware of it, but with every linux distro being open source, malware-makers can make all kinds of exploit kits for it in record time, because there's no trial an error like there is on windows, at this point in time, no antivirus company is really prepared to deal with zero-day linux malware.

But windows users, even stupid ones know that you need an antivirus program on windows. So the malware-makers have to play a cat-and-mouse game with windows malware if they hit a decent number of systems with their malware, that malware isn't going to be unknown for very long. And antivirus companies like bitdefender and avira, the former of which is great at adding new samples to the blacklist at super speed, and avira which isn't as good at that anymore because they got bought by...norton? If I remember correctly, they rent their database out to other antivirus companies, Eset, another really good detector of new malware also rents their database out to other antivirus companies.

ClamAV is good at detecting linux based malware...as far as I've heard, but it's useless against anything unknown to it.

windows is a pain in the ass to detail with...but that's only if you don't know how to work with it. Linux can be that way too. If there's a bug in some software that fucks up parts of your OS, there's not much support you can get from local techs, but if something like that happens with windows, there's loads of freelance independent computer techs out there that know how to fix it.

Linux is cool, if you can make it work for you, great! But don't act like windows is worthless. There's ways to deal with the bloat, and there's endless amounts of free advice on countless forums across the entire internet on how to deal with problems that come up

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 month ago

Honestly, I have Windows working just the way I want it right now (and I do know enough to be able to wrangle it to do just what I want it to do), but I could do without so much spyware. That's the main reason I'm looking into Linux. Any way you know how to get rid of Windows' built-in spyware without impacting security at all or breaking anything too badly?

On a different note, I have actually been looking for a new antivirus, preferably a free but very good one. Norton (my dad subscribed to it and got like 10 license keys years ago and shared with the family) has become too much like adware for me in recent years. Your comment has been helpful with that.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 month ago

The kicker is, for years and years down the line, all of your tech questions will be written to Google as "How do I xxxx in ".

Many, but not all, of those problems are resolved by searching "in Linux", but others you'd have to search for "in ". Windows is just Windows.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

You can use something like VirtualBox or VMWare. Won’t be the fastest experience, but also not so bad. It’s good enough to have a feel of how something works.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 month ago (1 children)

You can create a partition on your hard drive and set your PC up to dual-boot. I have no idea if this is still widely used or if there is another, better/easier way, but it's what I did a long time ago for a hat simulator game.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

I've read in a few different places that, unfortunately, more recent Windows bootloader's can break dual-boot setups.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 month ago (1 children)

You can make a persistent install on a thumb drive actually. Has been possible for about a decade I think. There's even a program now called Ventoy that lets you make multiple persistent installs of different Linux distros on a single thumb drive even.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 month ago (2 children)

I think I've tried Ventoy before, actually. I didn't know it did persistent installs.

Unfortunately, I couldn't figure out how to enable my PC to boot from a USB device. It uses the most recent version of the MyAsus UEFI, the one that looks like this picture I pulled from online (minus the red outline, obviously):

You don't happen to know how to enable booting from a device from there, do you? All the guides I found online were for an older version of the Asus UEFI settings.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 month ago

Chiming in to say that on my asus laptop, the start up button is f12! Press as soon as the first logo appears on the screen. It might take a few times to get the timing right, if you miss it just restart the computer.

It should take you to a menu that looks like a classic hacker screen (blue screen with pixilated text, no clickable UI). Then go to the boot options and select the USB.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 month ago

Normally when your PC is initially starting up, F8 will bring up the boot menu and you'd select the USB drive. Otherwise, where it says boot order, clicking around there should let you change the boot order and have the drive boot first every time. Actually, if you're using it as a persistent then this is probably the better option.

I'm not the biggest computer buff compared to some here, so if I'm wrong in any way let me know or comment again - someone will likely come give the right answer lol.

Plus I haven't used Ventoy much, I only used to do it the old fashioned way of partitioning it many years ago until I found what I liked best.

For beginners, I recommend Fedora or Ubuntu based distros because they're definitely the most user friendly, like windows or the days, possibly more now? At least BazziteOS has had more feature compatibility than Windows, which I was shocked by. Still testing all my games, but so far that works well too.

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