Microsoft to launch delayed Recall feature following security controversy

Microsoft (MSFT) is set to finally release its long-delayed Recall feature for Windows 11. The software option, which the company debuted back in May, saves screenshots of virtually everything you do on your computer allowing you to search for and interact with them later on.

For instance, if you were booking a hotel room but forgot the website you were using or need to find an old document and can’t remember what you named it, you can use Recall to describe the site or document and it will find them for you by searching through those screenshots.

It’s a helpful concept, but security researchers quickly raised concerns about the potential for hackers or malware software to gain access to those screenshots, steal users’ data, and view some of their most sensitive information.

In response, Microsoft put the feature on hold and instead chose to launch its Copilot+ PCs without Recall. Now, after reworking the software, Microsoft says it’s ready to go and that users’ data will be as secure as it could possibly be. Microsoft has yet to reveal the official launch date however.

“I think this is really a statement from Microsoft saying we’re going to put our full power into making AI secure,” David Weston, Microsoft vice president of Enterprise and OS Security, told Yahoo Finance.

One of the biggest changes to Recall is that it is now opt-in, meaning if you want to use it, you’ll need to select a specific box that says as much. Recall was previously enabled by default.

Microsoft also says that users’ screenshots, or Snapshots, as the company calls them, are encrypted and that the only way to access them is using Microsoft’s Windows Hello, which requires you to authenticate that you are who you say you are using your laptop’s fingerprint reader or facial recognition capabilities.

If a user’s laptop is infected with malware, Microsoft says it uses rate-limiting and anti-hammering to prevent the malicious software from accessing your information. Rate-limiting and anti-hammering detect when someone or something is trying to log into a program too many times in a short amount of time and require them to reauthenticate via their fingerprint or face ID.

Read more: How to create a strong password and protect your financial accounts

Microsoft also says that Recall is now using the company’s Purview software, which helps protect enterprise systems, to ensure the platform doesn’t save things like users’ passwords, national ID numbers, or credit card numbers. According to Weston, Purview contains a database that allows it to recognize what those types of numbers might look like and prevents Recall from capturing images of them.

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What’s more, Microsoft says users will be able to choose what kind of screenshots Recall can take. You can, for instance, tell Recall not to capture Snapshots of specific apps or web browsers or certain types of documents. You can also fully disable or uninstall Recall if you don’t want it on your computer at all.

Additionally, the software will recognize when you’re using private browsing or incognito mode with your web browser and stop capturing images of what you’re looking at.

To prove its security chops, Microsoft says it conducted months of security reviews using its Microsoft Offensive Research and Security Engineering team and third-party security experts to ensure the software is safe.

Recall is one of the marquee features of Microsoft’s Copilot+ PCs, which is a designation for laptops that meet a specific threshold of power and capabilities and are running the latest version of Windows 11. Launching the software without Recall, however, meant that while users still had access to the Copilot assistant software, they weren’t able to access one of the capabilities that Microsoft hoped would be a major selling point for its AI push.

Now Microsoft just has to ensure the software is as secure as it says.

Email Daniel Howley at dhowley@yahoofinance.com. Follow him on Twitter at @DanielHowley.

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