Microsoft’s Windows Recall feature is attracting controversy before even venturing out of preview.
Microsoft said in its FAQs that its snapshotting feature will vacuum up sensitive information: “Recall does not perform content moderation. It will not hide information such as passwords or financial account numbers. That data may be in snapshots stored on your device, especially when sites do not follow standard internet protocols like cloaking password entry.”
Mozilla’s Chief Product Officer Steve Teixeira told The Register: "Mozilla is concerned about Windows Recall. From a browser perspective, some data should be saved, and some shouldn’t.
Jake Moore, Global Cybersecurity Advisor at ESET, noted that while the feature is not on by default, its use “opens up another avenue for criminals to attack.”
Moore warned that “users should be mindful of allowing any content to be analysed by AI algorithms for a better experience.”
Cybersecurity expert Kevin Beaumont was scathing in his assessment of the technology, writing: “In essence, a keylogger is being baked into Windows as a feature.”
AI expert Gary Marcus was blunter: “F^ck that. I don’t want my computer to spy on everything I ever do.”
Try BazziteOS
It’s meant for gaming, but I find it’s so feature complete that’s it’s great for non-gaming purposes.
Somehow it even works better on my monitor than Windows, since I can actually control my brightness from an applet rather than having to use my monitor buttons.
Not OP, but I feel like every time I come across a thread like this, someone is recommending a different version of Linux. It makes it really difficult to decide, and I can’t exactly just “try out” Linux on my computer the same way I could try out other programs.
Yes, I could install it on a thumb drive, but that’s not persistent, so I couldn’t try it out for more than a few hours. Takes longer than that to decide to completely switch OSes.
You can make a persistent install on a thumb drive actually. Has been possible for about a decade I think. There’s even a program now called Ventoy that lets you make multiple persistent installs of different Linux distros on a single thumb drive even.
I think I’ve tried Ventoy before, actually. I didn’t know it did persistent installs.
Unfortunately, I couldn’t figure out how to enable my PC to boot from a USB device. It uses the most recent version of the MyAsus UEFI, the one that looks like this picture I pulled from online (minus the red outline, obviously):
You don’t happen to know how to enable booting from a device from there, do you? All the guides I found online were for an older version of the Asus UEFI settings.
Normally when your PC is initially starting up, F8 will bring up the boot menu and you’d select the USB drive. Otherwise, where it says boot order, clicking around there should let you change the boot order and have the drive boot first every time. Actually, if you’re using it as a persistent then this is probably the better option.
I’m not the biggest computer buff compared to some here, so if I’m wrong in any way let me know or comment again - someone will likely come give the right answer lol.
Plus I haven’t used Ventoy much, I only used to do it the old fashioned way of partitioning it many years ago until I found what I liked best.
For beginners, I recommend Fedora or Ubuntu based distros because they’re definitely the most user friendly, like windows or the days, possibly more now? At least BazziteOS has had more feature compatibility than Windows, which I was shocked by. Still testing all my games, but so far that works well too.
Chiming in to say that on my asus laptop, the start up button is f12! Press as soon as the first logo appears on the screen. It might take a few times to get the timing right, if you miss it just restart the computer.
It should take you to a menu that looks like a classic hacker screen (blue screen with pixilated text, no clickable UI). Then go to the boot options and select the USB.
The kicker is, for years and years down the line, all of your tech questions will be written to Google as “How do I xxxx in <obscure distro name here>”.
Many, but not all, of those problems are resolved by searching “in Linux”, but others you’d have to search for “in <similar distro>”. Windows is just Windows.
You can use something like VirtualBox or VMWare. Won’t be the fastest experience, but also not so bad. It’s good enough to have a feel of how something works.
You can create a partition on your hard drive and set your PC up to dual-boot. I have no idea if this is still widely used or if there is another, better/easier way, but it’s what I did a long time ago for a hat simulator game.
I’ve read in a few different places that, unfortunately, more recent Windows bootloader’s can break dual-boot setups.
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Honestly, I have Windows working just the way I want it right now (and I do know enough to be able to wrangle it to do just what I want it to do), but I could do without so much spyware. That’s the main reason I’m looking into Linux. Any way you know how to get rid of Windows’ built-in spyware without impacting security at all or breaking anything too badly?
On a different note, I have actually been looking for a new antivirus, preferably a free but very good one. Norton (my dad subscribed to it and got like 10 license keys years ago and shared with the family) has become too much like adware for me in recent years. Your comment has been helpful with that.