this post was submitted on 08 Jun 2024
1634 points (97.5% liked)

Technology

59641 readers
2611 users here now

This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.


Our Rules


  1. Follow the lemmy.world rules.
  2. Only tech related content.
  3. Be excellent to each another!
  4. Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
  5. Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
  6. Politics threads may be removed.
  7. No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
  8. Only approved bots from the list below, to ask if your bot can be added please contact us.
  9. Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed

Approved Bots


founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
 

It's a nightmare scenario for Microsoft. The headlining feature of its new Copilot+ PC initiative, which is supposed to drive millions of PC sales over the next couple of years, is under significant fire for being what many say is a major breach of privacy and security on Windows. That feature in question is Windows Recall, a new AI tool designed to remember everything you do on Windows. The feature that we never asked and never wanted it.

Microsoft, has done a lot to degrade the Windows user experience over the last few years. Everything from obtrusive advertisements to full-screen popups, ignoring app defaults, forcing a Microsoft Account, and more have eroded the trust relationship between Windows users and Microsoft.

It's no surprise that users are already assuming that Microsoft will eventually end up collecting that data and using it to shape advertisements for you. That really would be a huge invasion of privacy, and people fully expect Microsoft to do it, and it's those bad Windows practices that have led people to this conclusion.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] TwilightVulpine@lemmy.world 26 points 5 months ago (1 children)

A couple years ago it wasn't thoroughly and transparently sucking off every bit of personal data it could get, and gearing up to put adds on the desktop on top of that.

[–] Linkerbaan@lemmy.world 18 points 5 months ago (1 children)
[–] Duamerthrax@lemmy.world 14 points 5 months ago (2 children)

Seems the consensus is that telemetry started with Win7, but I swear I remember privacy people freaking out about Win95 or 98 sending system specs or something back with out telling the user. It's been a slow boil for a long time.

[–] ultratiem@lemmy.ca 3 points 5 months ago

Yeah I think 7 was when it was a big blip on the radar. But 100% they had to start laying that foundation beforehand, so I wouldn’t be surprised if it was either always there or started making its way in 98.

95 was relatively groundbreaking and a part of me thinks the PC was so new they hadn’t thought of it yet or if it was even possible given the nature of internet, but you can’t put anything past the marketing guys that would probably love to know what colour your shit is.

[–] ninekeysdown@lemmy.world 1 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Yes & No.

From what I remember from that time it wasn’t really a lot of people going on about privacy at that time. We were more concerned with how they just grabbed the BSD networking stack without saying anything about it.

There were a few things w/rt activation that people were pissed about. That was more towards the XP era though.

Though maybe someone else remembers it differently than I do since I wasn’t paying attention to privacy at that point and I don’t remember seeing anything about it in PCMAG or G4

[–] Duamerthrax@lemmy.world 2 points 5 months ago (1 children)

I vaguely remember something from TechTV or Slashdot. Searches only turn up more recent discussions though. The old stories are getting buried by the more recent shit going on.

[–] ninekeysdown@lemmy.world 1 points 5 months ago

Don’t worry a quick google search will tell us to use a non toxic glue mixed with vanta black to keep privacy intact