It’s no secret Windows is far from a privacy-respecting operating system, but Microsoft may have just set a new standard in privacy invasion with the recently announced upcoming feature to Windows 11: Recall.
What is Recall?
Recall is the latest in the line of AI-assisted features coming to Windows. The way it works is quite simple: It records everything* you do on your computer by silently taking screenshots and analysing them using Copilot, Microsoft’s brand of AI trained in collaboration with OpenAI. This will build a history of everything you do on your computer and allows you to search it, which is where Copilot enters the picture. Your search will look both for text that appeared on screen, as well as any objects it recognises as matching the prompt.
Of course, that “everything” won’t include a couple things: any sort of DRM content (because of course), as well as incognito tabs… in Microsoft Edge alone. If you use an incognito/private tab in any other browser, such as Chrome, Firefox, or Vivaldi, then everything will get recorded just like regular tabs.
When Microsoft announced it, the first thing on everyone’s minds was “this is creepy”. Microsoft tried to reassure everyone that this doesn’t affect their privacy by stating that all collected information is only stored and processed locally, but the details of how this storage is done has only made more technically savvy people even more wary of Recall. (more on that later)
What’s wrong with it?
Well, a lot. The privacy implications of the operating system itself recording everything you do put Windows 11 on the same tier of spyware as the North Korean RedstarOS (which is its own can of worms, maybe for another day).
But let’s take Microsoft for their word and pretend there are absolutely no privacy issues with Recall (yeah, sure), this is still terrible for security.
One thing that’s strangely missing in both the post on the Windows Blog initially announcing Recall and in the Microsoft Support entry about Recall, is any mention of how all of this data will be stored and handled locally, all we get is buzzwords about how this is supposedly the greatest thing since sliced bread.
Well, if you dig a bit deeper you can find another Microsoft Support entry that does talk about this. IF you’re wondering how this is encrypted, it uses BitLocker, Microsoft’s solution for full disk encryption on Windows. This might sound great, but there are two issues with this:
BitLocker availability
BitLocker is only actually available on Windows 10 and 11 Pro, Enterprise, and Education. If you use Windows 10 or 11 Home (the versions that actually ship with a lot of computers), you don’t get BitLocker. Does this mean that that the data remains unencrypted if you don’t have access to BitLocker, or simply opted not to use it for one reason or another? Or is BitLocker magically allowed just for the Recall history even on SKUs that aren’t supposed to have it?
How does the encryption actually work?
BitLocker is designed for full disk encryption, so does this mean the Recall history is encrypted together with everything else on your computer (meaning it’s decrypted while you’re actually using the system), or does it get stored on a separate partition that only Recall has access to? Or maybe BitLocker now has a secret mode that lets it work on files instead of the whole disk? (there’s no mention of this 3rd possibility anywhere)
If the history is encrypted along with everything else on the system, that means it only protects the data from physical theft: If someone steals your whole computer, they won’t have access to the encrypted data since it only gets decrypted during operation.
But what about malware or scammers? Malware isn’t actually affected by full disk encryption since the OS would start encrypting and decrypting everything on-the-fly before the malware is actually loaded. Scammers tricking people into installing malware or remote access tools on their computers aren’t affected by this, either, for the same reason. And what if either of those decides to download Recall history? They’d be able to see everything the computer’s owner did in detail, complete with pictures. Won’t even need to infer what the user might have been doing based on logs anymore.
In short: Microsoft talks big about how this is secured but all I’m seeing are buzzwords. TPMs and full disk encryption can help protect against some things, but not against social engineering, the most common attack vector for any “hack” in this day and age.
How can this be fixed?
Honestly? By just not doing it.
Collecting a detailed history means another thing to keep safe on an internet-connected machine. Any Computer Guy™ will already tell you that this is hard enough on its own, but now try doing it on machines owned and operated not by trained professionals whose job is to keep things safe, but by people with only the most basic understanding of computers, who get scared when seeing the command line and who are often tricked into compromising their systems themselves.
So the solution is quite simple: don’t collect any more info than needs to be collected.
The less stuff you need to keep secured, the easier it is to not muck it up.
Oh, and to quote Jurassic Park: maybe stop and think if you should do it before you ask yourself if you can. Sure, Recall might sound kinda neat in practice, and as a programmer I can appreciate the complexity of the task, but does this actually need to be done? Do people actually need a full history with pictures of everything they do on their computer that they can later search using an AI?