Microsoft Recall Has Been Recalled

Microsoft Seems To Be Having A Rough Friday

It seems that when the Qualcomm powered Copilot+ PCs arrive next week, they will be lacking Microsoft Recall.  The story at Ars Technica describes a series of mistakes which lead to the announcement of Microsoft Recall and now it’s delayed launch.  You are likely familiar with the obscene security risks that Recall brings, a complete recording of every login to your bank and other secure sites, with no additional encryption to prevent someone who gains access to your machine from making a copy of it for themselves.  The fact that Microsoft Recall was to be enabled by default, there would be a lot of users who had no idea all their actions were being captured, nor that this could result in terrifying consequences.

It also seems that the development of Microsoft Recall may have been relatively secret, with only a small team at Microsoft designing it.  If true, that would mean that the security team at Microsoft would have never had a chance to vet the feature, nor to point out the glaringly obvious security risks it brings.  Then again, that team is in hot water for previously dropping the ball and is under investigation for a “cascade of security failures”. 

This is only a delay at the moment, Microsoft is still planning on pushing Recall to their Copilot+ PCs and to Intel and AMD based systems when the new chips containing a powerful enough NPU to support Recall.  They are also working on fixing mistakes they made with the original Copilot app.  Microsoft decided to push the feature to Server 2025 preview builds which drew very harsh criticism from any and all sysadmins that spotted it, not to mention dumping it on Windows 10 and 11 machines that can’t really support it thanks to a dodgy Edge update.

You can bet there will be more drama to enjoy in the coming weeks and months, as Microsoft tries to foist AI upon a large group their of users who have absolutely no interest in it.