Microsoft Just Hit The Brakes On Windows Copilot+ PCs' Creepiest Feature
Microsoft recently introduced a fancy new feature called Recall for Copilot+ AI PCs offered under its Surface lineup, as well as OEM partners that are once again putting their faith in the Windows on Arm hype. Recall essentially acts as a photographic memory system for your PC, capturing a screenshot of your on-screen activity every five seconds. The objective is to let users retrace their past activity if they need to pull up information buried in their usage history.
That means even the material you may have deleted is logged in the form of screenshot(s) locally on your PC. Ever since the tool was introduced, experts have highlighted the massive privacy threat that Microsoft Copilot poses, particularly because this feature was enabled by default. Well, Microsoft is finally making a course correction with two major changes.
First, Recall will be disabled by default. Users will now have to enable it manually during the setup process for their PC to save snapshots of their activity. There are already tools in place that let users delete past snapshots, set a time duration, and create exceptions for certain sensitive websites and apps.
Windows Hello comes to the rescue
The other notable change that is coming to Recall is a stronger authentication protocol. "Windows Hello enrollment is required to enable Recall. In addition, proof of presence is also required to view your timeline and search in Recall," Microsoft wrote in a post. That means Recall can only be enabled after users have set up Windows Hello for log-in, which means they have to pick between a fingerprint, face unlock, or a secure PIN for access.
Another crucial guardrail is a "just in time" decryption system, which is also protected by what Microsoft calls Windows Hello Enhanced Sign-in Security (ESS). In a nutshell, all Recall screenshots are safely stored behind a layer of protection. They are only decrypted and ready to view when the computer is in active use. That means if you forget your computer at a coffee shop, a bad actor won't be able to see your Recall snapshots even if they got their hands on your laptop.
But so far, there hasn't been any Windows Hello firewall involved for the decryption. Today, Microsoft has confirmed that Recall decryption will require a Windows Hello walkthrough. The changes will be implemented before Recall is pushed for public testing through the Preview testing channel.