Microsoft has provided an update on the Windows 11 Recover feature, which has been frozen for some time now, as its reveal caused quite a stir due to security and privacy concerns, and when it plans to move forward with the feature and bring it to Copilot+ . PC.
As the Agency reports, Microsoft said in a statement that the plan is to roll out Recall on CoPilot+ laptops in November, with a number of measures being put in place to ensure the feature is secure enough detailed in a blog post separate.
So what are these measures designed to placate critics of Recall, a capability that is an AI-powered search in Windows 11 that takes advantage of regular screenshots ('snapshots' as Microsoft calls them) of activity on your PC, just like it was? originally planned?
One of the key changes is that Recall will be strictly optional, as Microsoft had told us before, as opposed to the default approach taken when the feature was first introduced.
Microsoft notes: “During the setup experience for Copilot+ PCs, users have a clear choice about whether they want to save snapshots using Recall. If a user does not choose to activate it proactively, it will be disabled and no photos will be taken or saved.”
Additionally, as Microsoft told us previously, snapshots (and other Recall-related data) will be fully encrypted and Windows Hello authentication will be a requirement to use the feature. In other words, you'll need to log in through Hello to ensure that you're the one actually using Recall (and not someone else on your PC).
Additionally, Recall will use a secure environment called Virtualization-Based Security Enclave, or VBS Enclave, which is a fully secure virtual machine isolated from the Windows 11 system, which can only be accessed by the user with a decryption key (provided with Windows Hello ). login).
David Weston, who wrote the Microsoft blog post and is vice president of enterprise and operating system security, explained to Windows Central: “All sensitive recovery processes, i.e. screenshots, screenshot processing, and databases vector data, is now located in a VBS enclave. We basically took Recall and put it in a virtual machine. [VM]so not even administrative users can interact in that VM or run any code or see any data.”
In fact, Microsoft cannot see your withdrawal data either. And as the software giant has made clear before, all of this data is saved locally on your machine; none of them are sent to the cloud (that could be a big security concern if they were). By the way, this is why Recall is exclusive to Copilot+ for PC, because you need a powerful NPU for acceleration and local processing for Recall to run responsive enough (since you can't take advantage of the cloud to accelerate the hard work of AI).
Finally, Microsoft combats a previous concern about Recall taking screenshots of, say, your online banking site and perhaps sensitive financial information: the feature now leaks things like passwords, credit card numbers, etc.
Other privacy-enhancing measures include the ability to exclude specific apps or websites from Recall taking snapshots (and we should note that private browsing sessions, like Chrome's Incognito mode, are never subject to screenshots , at least in supported web browsers). .
By the way, an icon will appear in the taskbar when a recovery snapshot is saved and it will be easy to pause these screenshots from there if you wish.
Analysis: Called from the bench, but with a lot to prove
Microsoft has basically taken Recall back to the drawing board on the security and privacy fronts over the past few months, and overall the results deserve a thumbs up. (Though let's be honest, things like strict encryption should have been there from the beginning, and it's a little scary that they weren't.)
If you are still concerned about recovery despite these measures, you simply do not need to enable it. And since it's now clearly disabled by default, there's no danger that less tech-savvy people will end up using the feature by accident, without realizing what it is.
The path Recall is on now is that it will return to testing in October, so very soon, and with Copilot+ launching for PCs in November, it is on a fast track to reach the computing public (well, those who they have done it). Anyway, I invested in a Copilot+ laptop. We're sure that for those people, Recall will still be marked as in “preview” and it's debatable whether they should take the plunge with an ability like this when it's not fully finished yet.
Of course, we're getting a little ahead of ourselves here: the next step is for Recall to arrive in test builds of Windows 11 and see what Windows Insiders do with it. If issues arise in those pre-release versions, we may still see the withdrawal delayed for release on Copilot+ PCs.
Microsoft is talking about a much bigger security play for Recall here, without a doubt, and let's hope there are no hiccups or bugs in terms of implementing all of this. Considering how the initial incarnation of Recall was created (with a worrying lack of attention to detail), it's easy to be cynical here, but presumably Microsoft won't fall into this trap again.