It’s kind of funny: as I’m listening to today’s episode of Cyberwire Daily, the first story is exactly what I wanted to chat about in today’s post…

Recall.

No, I’m not talking about Total Recall. And, the GOOD one, not that one with Colin Farrell.

I’m talking about Recall, that is a soon-to-be-baked-in feature of Windows 11. Don’t know what I’m talking about? You can read all about it here. Here’s the opening paragraph:

Search across time to find the content you need. Then, re-engage with it. With Recall, you have an explorable timeline of your PC’s past. Just describe how you remember it and Recall will retrieve the moment you saw it. Any photo, link, or message can be a fresh point to continue from. As you use your PC, Recall takes snapshots of your screen. Snapshots are taken every five seconds while content on the screen is different from the previous snapshot. Your snapshots are then locally stored and locally analyzed on your PC. Recall’s analysis allows you to search for content, including both images and text, using natural language. Trying to remember the name of the Korean restaurant your friend Alice mentioned? Just ask Recall and it retrieves both text and visual matches for your search, automatically sorted by how closely the results match your search. Recall can even take you back to the exact location of the item you saw.

Sounds really neat, right? Can’t remember something? Press a button, and whoooooosh, everything you ever did is right there for you to retrace your steps.

Can’t remember the account number that you need to pay that invoice? Can’t find that confidential file you need for the presentation in 10 minutes? Can’t remember where you put that Word file with all of your passwords stored in it? Can’t remember the name of the shelter you were trying to escape an abusive ex from?

Oh, wait ….

Yeah, not quite the intended effect, is it? Microsoft says that all of the info is stored locally, which helps against someone trying to access that info remotely, but what about protecting against people who HAVE physical access?

Microsoft also says that you can turn off the feature, but to me, that implies that the feature will be ON TO BEGIN WITH. When did we become the ‘opt out’ society, rather than the ‘opt IN’ society? Let US decide whether or not to accept the risk, rather than thrust it upon us, and leave us to figure out how to turn the thing off.

I think I’ll pass on that one.

-T