“Luke Larsen / Digital Trends”
Even before Copilot+ PCs have made it to the store shelves, Microsoft is already making changes to its Recall feature. Recall is at the very heart of Copilot+, taking snapshots of everything you do on your PC and using a local AI model to sort through that information. In response to the backlash, Microsoft is making adjustments to how Recall functions, as announced through a Windows blog post.
For starters, Recall is now set to be an opt-in option rather than an opt-out one. Previously, Recall would be the default setting on Copilot+ laptops, but now Microsoft will display a screen during the setup process that informs users about what Recall does. If you skip past that screen, Recall will remain turned off.
Microsoft is also requiring Windows Hello to be used in conjunction with Recall now. You’ll need to authenticate using either your face or fingerprint to access Recall, and Microsoft states that “proof of presence” through Windows Hello is necessary to view the snapshots that Recall has saved. This is a significant change, as leaving your Copilot+ PC open while you step away could potentially lead to various privacy and security issues that previously existed.
Finally, Microsoft says it is employing “just in time” decryption for your Recall database, along with an encrypted search index. This means that your snapshots will be decrypted immediately after you authenticate with Windows Hello, but they will remain encrypted up to that point.
Recall caused quite a stir in the PC community due to its remarkable ability to remember everything you do on your PC, from web searches to private messages. The AI processing of this data occurs on the device itself – it never gets sent to a data center – yet there are still clear privacy and security concerns with that setup. The changes mentioned here should help make Recall a bit more secure.
The most significant change by far, however, is leaving Recall set to off by default. It seems that Microsoft ultimately wants this feature to be a part of the broader Windows ecosystem, which could potentially mean that unsuspecting users are inadvertently feeding data to Recall that they may not be using. This is a shocking shift for Microsoft, which traditionally enables its services by default in Windows. It speaks to just how intense the backlash against Recall truly was.