Windows 10: Windows Recall: Microsoft's second launch attempt after devastating criticism

When Microsoft announced the AI-feature Windows Recall earlier this year, it was confident that it would receive praise for the feature.

The main idea behind Recall was to give users AI-powered access to past activity on their Windows PCs. Recall would capture a screenshot every five seconds, process the data, and allow users to interact with that data using natural language.

What followed was a wave of criticism. Privacy and security advocates criticized Microsoft for several key aspects:

• Recall would run automatically after the initial setup. In other words, it was opt-out, not opt-in.
• The database and data was not specially secured during runtime.

Microsoft pulled Recall shortly thereafter and promised to to better. The company has now highlighted changes that it made to Recall in a new blog post on the Windows Experience blog.

Recall: the security and privacy changes


Microsoft addresses the criticism in several ways. First, by making Windows Recall and opt-in experience. Microsoft says that users will see an option to turn on Recall during the out-of-box experience.

They may also turn it on at a later point in time. Good news for users who do not want anything to do with Recall: it can be uninstalled, despite Microsoft's previous comment that this won't be possible.

Second, Microsoft is improving security by encrypting Recall's database and running essential Recall processes in an isolated environment.

Malware cannot just copy the data during runtime anymore, thanks to the extra security.

On top of that, Windows Hello is required for certain actions. Microsoft mentions that prompts are shown when users try to make changes to Recall's settings and when they want to access the Recall user interface.

There are also rate-limiting and anti-hammering measures to limit malware attacks.

Windows Recall: Privacy Controls overview


The blog post offers a list of controls that users have over Recall; not all are new though.

Here is the overview:

• Users control the amount of disk space that Recall uses and for how long activity data is kept.
• Options to delete a time range, all data from a specific app or website, or anything that comes up during searches.
• Private browsing data is never saved in Edge, Chrome, Firefox, Opera and other Chromium-based browsers.
• Website activity can be blocked in Edge, Chrome, Firefox, and Opera.
• A system tray icon highlights activity and provides access to Recall.
• Recall supports sensitive content filtering through Microsoft’s Purview information protection product.

Closing Words


The announced changes address two of the major points of criticism: that Recall was opt-out and that the data was not secured properly.

There is still some uncertainty regarding the implementation during setup and thereafter. Still, with Windows Recall being opt-in, there is less of a chance that the feature runs in the background without the user really knowing about it.

What is your take on the announced changes? Is it enough? Would you give Recall a try now, or is it still not something that you are interested in? Feel free to leave a comment down below.

Thank you for being a Ghacks reader. The post Windows Recall: Microsoft's second launch attempt after devastating criticism appeared first on gHacks Technology News.

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Microsoft signals end of Paint program

Microsoft has confirmed that it will continue to offer its graphics program Paint.

In a recent update, it had listed Paint as a feature that would be either removed or no longer developed.

Paint, renowned for its simplicity, has been part of the Windows operating system since its launch in 1985.

Microsoft suggested it would not remain on Windows 10 by default but did say it would be available for free on the Windows Store.

BBC news Report here
Microsoft Paint avoids brush with death

 

Microsoft Excel 2016 Slow to Launch

Within our corporate environment; we use Folder Redirection for profile folders (e.g. those in Group Policy, AppData\Roaming, Desktop, Documents, etc).

We have enabled Always Offline Mode and ensured a conflict resolution policy of '1' is effective, to give precedence to a local copy, over a remote copy, in the event of a conflict.

Our user base has begun reporting that Microsoft Excel 2016 is being slow to launch (on Windows 10, though not sure if this is relevant at the moment). We've been able to verify that does indeed appear to be the case, with launches taking anywhere between thirty seconds to two minutes.

An extensive amount of troubleshooting has already taken place and we've been able to conclude the following steps are ineffective at resolving the problem:

• disabling Hello Cortana;
  
• disabling DDE (Dynamic Data Exchange);
  
• disabling Hardware Acceleration;
  
• disabling addins;
  
• clearing recently opened items;
  
• defaulting printer from a network instance to local (i.e. PDF Printer);
  
• repairing installation, via Programs and Features;
  
• setting \\SERVER\Home (inclusive of sub-folders) as a Trusted Location;
  
• granting Domain Users Full Control on Share Permissions.
  

We've been able to verify the following:

• profile folders are indeed working from Offline Files, and online/latency is not a factor;
  
• there is no configuration to open X, Y, Z documents when Excel launches;
  
• a launch of Excel into Safe Mode (Ctrl + launch) is instantaneous;
  
• the slowness is only experienced on the first instance in Normal Mode, subsequent launches are instantaneous.
  

Potential Factors:

• Realtek Audio Driver (sounds odd, I know) has been responsible for one of the reports, the driver was uninstalled and there's been no recurrence. However, in other cases this does not appear to be a resolution;
  
• Permissions Issue (Server-side or Sync Center) -
  

Process Monitor has suggested a permissions issue is responsible, for a large duration of the launch time it reported

When browsing the file locally and attempting to delete it, it does throw a permissions error. However, the file on the server shows the user has full permissions over it.

As Offline Files does not show a permissions tab I'm unsure whether permissions are being lost in the transition to Offline Files? or if additional server-side permissions are required (though what and why?) or if this is simply a red-herring?

Any ideas?

 

Unable to launch Microsoft Store and Microsoft store apps.

Hi,

Thank you for writing to Microsoft Community Forums.

I understand how it could be when the applications doesn’t work as they are supposed to. We will look into this. However, please reply to the following questions to help you in a better way:

• Are you getting any error message?
  
• Since when are you facing this issue?
  
• Are you aware of any changes made on the computer recently?
  

In the meantime, I suggest you to follow the steps from the article
Fix problems with apps from Microsoft Store to fix the issues with the Microsoft apps that are not launching. Also, follow the steps from the article

Microsoft Store doesn't launch to fix the issues you are facing in launching Store.

Hope it helps.

Please reply with the status of the issue, we will be glad to help you further.

Nikhar Khare

Microsoft Community - Moderator