Hacker Tool Extracts Data from Windows’ New Recall AI

Microsoft’s New Recall Feature: Privacy Concerns and Security Risks

Introduction

Microsoft’s new Recall feature, which captures screenshots of your activity every five seconds, has raised significant privacy and security concerns among experts.

What is Recall?

Recall, introduced during a Surface laptop event, is designed to help users retrieve past activities on their devices through natural language search queries. This includes web pages visited and messages received.

Security Concerns

Security experts warn that the data captured by Recall may not remain secure on the device. Hagenah, who developed a similar tool called TotalRecall, describes it as a “Trojan 2.0” and urges Microsoft to make changes before Recall’s full launch.

“It’s a Trojan 2.0 really, built in,”

Potential Risks

Hagenah highlights the risks for companies with “bring your own device” policies. Employees leaving with large volumes of company data on their laptops pose a significant threat, especially if they are disgruntled.

Regulatory Concerns

The UK’s Information Commissioner’s Office has requested more details from Microsoft about Recall and its privacy implications.

Current Status and Recommendations

Recall is currently a “preview” feature and may change before its official release. Beaumont, a researcher, suggests that Microsoft should reconsider and rework Recall to ensure it meets security standards.

“They also need to review the internal decision-making that led to this situation, as this kind of thing should not happen.”