> MS can always put in hooks that makes it easy for them to exfiltrate specific data

MS can issue an update any day to just copy all drives you currently have attached to Azure, if we're going to put on our tin foil hats.

Er, isn't that how onedrive works? It's not a "tin foil hat" move to point out that that's exactly what does happen to users who aren't paying attention and opting out, and it's equally valid to extrapolate that they might continue similar behaviors with new features.

No, OneDrive doesn't upload all data from all attached drives.

You're right, it only started uploading people's most important data without clear and deliberate setup, not all their data.

That's more than enough to make these worries not tinfoil hat.

> and MS can always put in hooks that makes it easy for them to exfiltrate specific data that was technically harvested

Just like they always can put hooks into Windows to do the same thing. And Google can put hooks into Android. And Apple into macOS.

With AI that processes periodically-captured screenshots, the threat is an order of magnitude greater. It’s always been possible for companies to indiscriminately copy data, but cost and risk of detection have made doing so an expensive and risky proposition. AI flips that on its head and makes it possible to target individuals and groups with incredible precision and reduces the volume of data that needs to be transmitted to almost nothing.

It's also opt-in.

It is fully user controllable and allways was.

Not in the fullest sense. It can be turned off (for now), but its behavior once enabled is subject entirely to Microsoft’s whims.

Full user control is what you’d have if e.g. you were running a FOSS Recall analogue powered by the local LLM of your choice on some flavor of Linux. That setup will only ever do what the user intends it to and barring supply chain exploits, cannot go rogue.

The behavior of Windows is subject to Microsoft's whims. Microsoft could just as easily have pushed an update to Windows XP that exfiltrated sensitive screenshots too. The existence of a user-facing feature changes nothing at all here

See again: Raymond Chen's "other side of an airtight hatchway" analogy. Microsoft already have ring 0 access to your machine

> That setup will only ever do what the user intends it to

There are tons of times I've had stuff running on a Linux box do things I didn't intend it to do. Often even with software I wrote!

I guess you're one of those people who only ever writes perfect code that exactly does what you intend the first time.

Alright, let’s rephrase it to be a bit more pedantry-proof: A Linux-based FOSS analogue of Recall built on a self-hosted LLM of the user’s choice will never actively undermine the user’s privacy or sell them out as long as they’ve vetted all software involved.

There’s always the possibility of vulnerabilities and exploits but that’s not the point.