Oh boy. Microsoft has announced a new Windows 11 Recall capability that will essentially record everything you do on your PC.

Announced here earlier this week, Microsoft describes the feature, as follows:

“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.”

Every…five…seconds. Is that a good thing? Hmmm.

According to Microsoft, your PC needs the following minimum system requirements for Recall:

• A Copilot+ PC
• 16 GB RAM
• 8 logical processors
• 256 GB storage capacity
• To enable Recall, you’ll need at least 50 GB of storage space free
• Saving screenshots automatically pauses once the device has less than 25 GB of storage space

Assuming you have those requirements, you can use the keyboard shortcut {windows button on your keyboard} +J to access Windows 11 Recall, or select the following Recall icon on your taskbar:

Your timeline in Recall is broken up into segments, which are the blocks of time that Recall was taking snapshots while you were using your PC. You can hover over your timeline to review your activity in a preview window (see the example at the top of this blog post).

According to Bleeping Computer, Microsoft states that no data will be sent to their servers. But Microsoft admits that the feature performs no content moderation, meaning it will screenshot everything it sees in active windows, including credentials, banking information, and other confidential information (only Microsoft Edge’s InPrivate windows and content protected by DRM will be excluded from Recall by default.). Which leads to the question: how secured will the information be on the Windows device? If the answer is “not very”, then it sounds like a computer hacker’s dream, and a computer owner’s nightmare!

I could see it being very easy for someone to accidentally click on the keyboard shortcut or select the Recall icon. Will it be obvious that they have entered into “Recall mode” when they do that? I could also see Microsoft turning the feature on by default at some point – it’s easier to ask for forgiveness than permission, right? 😮

P.S.: I was going to use a “Total Recall” pun in this post, but Jeff Brandt beat me to it in his PinHawk Law Technology Daily Digest. I’ll be back!

So, what do you think? Is the newly announced Windows 11 Recall a good thing or a bad thing? Please share any comments you might have or if you’d like to know more about a particular topic.

Images Copyright © Microsoft Corporation

Disclaimer: The views represented herein are exclusively the views of the authors and speakers themselves, and do not necessarily represent the views held by my employer, my partners or my clients. eDiscovery Today is made available solely for educational purposes to provide general information about general eDiscovery principles and not to provide specific legal advice applicable to any particular circumstance. eDiscovery Today should not be used as a substitute for competent legal advice from a lawyer you have retained and who has agreed to represent you.