Microsoft has announced that support for the Windows 10 operating system will end in October 2025, urging users to upgrade to the newer Windows 11. The shift is driven by Microsoft’s ambition to integrate artificial intelligence across its products, with Windows 11 serving as the flagship for this initiative. Alongside AI enhancements, the new operating system will introduce a feature known as “Recall”.
The Recall function, set to be included in devices like the Copilot+ PCs and the Surface Laptop 7th Edition, allows users to recall their activity history on the computer with just the press of a button. This feature is designed to provide a convenient way to revisit past actions, but it also raises significant privacy concerns.
Recall works by recording nearly everything a user does on their computer at five-second intervals. Although it excludes activities conducted in private browsing modes, such as Incognito, it captures virtually all other activities, including opened documents, visited websites, VPN and P2P activities, emails, videos, images, and games. The pervasive nature of this tracking has sparked alarm among privacy advocates.
According to Microsoft, all data recorded by Recall is stored locally on the user’s device and not uploaded to the cloud. However, this offers little comfort to those worried about security breaches. If a hacker gains administrator access to the system, they could potentially retrieve all of the data collected by Recall, exposing a detailed log of the user’s activities.
Users do have the option to restrict Recall’s permissions on an app-by-app basis, but the complexity of doing so raises concerns about whether many will take advantage of this capability. As the rollout of Windows 11 continues, the balance between convenience and privacy will undoubtedly remain a hot topic of discussion.
Do you want to know more? Read (in Finnish) about this topic in Pietarsaaren Sanomat (https://www.pietarsaarensanomat.fi/) 4.9.2024 (page 5):
https://lehdet.hillagroup.fi/pietarsaarensanomat/bc9455d2-340f-4293-8685-6a8e5539b9d4/5