Login
Windows 11’s Most Controversial AI Feature Is Back, and It’ll Never Be Secure
25 April 2025 at 17:00
There's a good reason you should keep Recall toggled off.
There's a good reason you should keep Recall toggled off.
Normal view
Received yesterday — 26 April 2025
There's a good reason you should keep Recall toggled off.
Microsoft rolls Windows Recall out to the public nearly a year after announcing it
25 April 2025 at 17:00
Nearly a year after announcing the feature, Microsoft is finally ready to roll the controversial Windows Recall feature out to the general public, the company announced today on its Windows Experience Blog.
Only available on Copilot+ PCs, a subset of Windows 11 systems sold within the last year or so, Recall takes continuous screenshots of everything you do on your PC, saving them, scraping text from them, and saving it all in a searchable database. This obviously has major security and privacy implications—anyone who can get access to your Recall database can see nearly everything you've done on your PC—which is why Microsoft's initial rollout attempt was such a mess.
Recall's long road to release involved a rushed initial almost-launch, harsh criticism of its (then mostly nonexistent) security protections, multiple delays, a major under-the-hood overhaul, and five months of testing in Microsoft's Windows Insider beta program. Microsoft signaled that Recall was nearly ready for release two weeks ago when it came to the near-final Release Preview channel.
© Microsoft
Received before yesterday
That groan you hear is users’ reaction to Recall going back into Windows
11 April 2025 at 18:45
Security and privacy advocates are girding themselves for another uphill battle against Recall, the AI tool rolling out in Windows 11 that will screenshot, index, and store everything a user does every three seconds.
When Recall was first introduced in May 2024, security practitioners roundly castigated it for creating a gold mine for malicious insiders, criminals, or nation-state spies if they managed to gain even brief administrative access to a Windows device. Privacy advocates warned that Recall was ripe for abuse in intimate partner violence settings. They also noted that there was nothing stopping Recall from preserving sensitive disappearing content sent through privacy-protecting messengers such as Signal.
Enshittification at a new scale
Following months of backlash, Microsoft later suspended Recall. On Thursday, the company said it was reintroducing Recall. It currently is available only to insiders with access to the Windows 11 Build 26100.3902 preview version. Over time, the feature will be rolled out more broadly. Microsoft officials wrote:
© Andrew Cunningham
