Microsoft, one of the giants of the sector, is not far behind in this race to offer new features to its users and, in this context, The Redmond company has announced a major new feature for its Windows operating system: Windows Recall.
This new feature, unveiled at the Microsoft Build 2024 event, promises to transform the way you interact with your computer. Using artificial intelligence, Recall is presented as a tool capable of recording and recovering practically everything you do on your PC, offering a kind of digital “photographic memory.”
However, as is often the case with some new features that arrive, Recall is not exempt from generating controversySince its announcement, it has sparked a huge debate about user privacy and security, leading Microsoft to speak out and clarify everything before its official launch.
With all this, it is time for you to get to know the tool in depth, to really understand how it works and, above all, to know what those potential dangers are that experts are talking so much about.
What is Windows Recall and how does it work?
Windows Recall is an artificial intelligence feature built into Windows 11, designed to improve the way users communicate, so to speak, with their computer and retrieve information.
Part of the Copilot+ ecosystem, this tool captures images of the computer screen every few seconds, creating a detailed visual record of all user activities. Recall works by analyzing these screenshots using advanced optical character recognition (OCR) and image processing techniques..
For example, if a user was working on an important report and remembered seeing a statistic a few days ago but couldn’t find it, they could use Recall to find that specific piece of information. They would simply type in a query like “sales statistic for last quarter” and Recall would search through their view history to find the relevant screenshot.
Copilot+, the AI assistant that works in conjunction with Recall, takes this functionality even further. Imagine you need to remember the name of a restaurant you saw mentioned in a WhatsApp Web conversation last week.
You could ask Copilot+ to find that information using Recall, by saying something like, “Find the name of the Italian restaurant my friend John mentioned last week.” Copilot+ would use Recall to search through your screenshot history, identify the conversation, and give you the answer.
It is being presented as a security hole and Microsoft is asking for calm
Although this has now been fixed, It is true that the tool did not come to light on a very good footing.. A group of security researchers discovered a few months ago that the screenshots stored by Recall were stored in an unencrypted database. This means that anyone with very bad intentions and access to the computer could easily extract this data.
Cybersecurity expert and ethical hacker Alex Hagenah developed a demo tool called TotalRecall. It was able to automatically extract and display all the data collected by Recall, thus revealing the potential security risk.
He explained that this includes screenshots of everything that appears on the desktop, such as messages in apps like Signal and WhatsApp, websites visited and texts displayed on the PC.
Kevin Beaumont, another researcher, also documented in detail how Recall works and how easy it is to extract stored information. He warned that this vulnerability could be exploited by attackers to steal usernames and passwords, a problem that has existed in the cybersecurity field for more than a decade.
Microsoft
Despite controversy, Microsoft announces a new date for Windows Recall
Leaving these problems aside for now, which seem to have already been solved, It is important to mention, as it is something that the company itself has wanted to highlight, that Recall is designed to run locally on the user’s computer.storing all the information in an encrypted database on the device itself.
This means that, in theory, the data collected by Recall is not sent to external servers, which, once clarified, did reassure many.
However, Because its basis is data capture, Microsoft has decided to make some adjustments to the function:
- First, you will be given the choice of whether to enable this feature or not, and the important thing here is that if you do not choose to enable it on your own, it will be disabled by default.
- On the other hand, both to activate the function and to view your history and other stored information, authentication in Windows Hello will be necessary, either through facial recognition, fingerprint or PIN.
- Finally, the database containing the registered information will be encrypted and only accessible through Windows Hello authentication. Even with these changes, organizations such as the OCU are asking the Spanish Data Protection Agency to remain very alert to any problems related to the operation of this new feature.
With all this, Windows Recall will be officially released in October 2024specifically for Microsoft Copilot+ PCs. It’s initially planned for Windows Insiders, allowing users to test out the feature before it’s generally available. Microsoft has promised more details about security and privacy improvements at launch.
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Tags: Artificial Intelligence, Video, Microsoft, Computers, Software, Cybersecurity, What is it
