Bad News For Windows Recall & How To Disable it

so it looks like Microsoft took quite a bit of heat because of Windows recall so some things have changed so I'm going to catch you up on that and I'm going to show you a way to possibly disable it stay tuned so as we talked about a few weeks ago one of the new AI features coming to Windows 11 in 24 H2 is called Windows recall the heat that Microsoft got for this feature was so intense that it got them to actually pull when Windows recall from the co-pilot plus launch now that doesn't mean it's going away completely but Microsoft is kind of tapping the brakes a bit and pulling Windows recall back into beta so that they can work on some security enhancements and this is actually some pretty big news so we're going to talk about that and I'm going to show you how you can just completely disable it but first I got to pay some bills so check out today's sponsor is your copy of Windows 10 unactivated well it doesn't have to be because with today's sponsor VIP SCD key you can get a valid Windows 10 license for under $20 stop dealing with that stupid watermark on the desktop the valid license for Windows 10 also with an activated copy of Windows 10 you can upgrade to Windows 11 for free just go to the link in the description below and pick up a valid Windows 10 license key during checkout use the code cyber CPU for a 25% discount once you have your key go to your activation settings in Windows 10 and click on the link that says says change product key enter the product key you just purchased and hit activate now you don't have to deal with that stupid Watermark that come with running an unactivated copy of Windows 10 now on with the video so yeah Microsoft pulled Windows recall from the latest beta bills of Windows 11 due to a major backlash from security researchers it turns out that some of the concerns that I talked about in my last video were well true Windows recall store data in a plain text database that was easily readable once the user was logged onto the system I'm pretty sure Microsoft originally said that the data stored by Windows recall was supposed to be encrypted well it turns out that they were talking about was the encryption with bit locker and as soon as you log into your computer Windows unlocks the drive therefore anything that is running in the background could potentially see your windows recall database so if you're computer is infected with malware it would be easy for that malware to scrape personal data from the windows recall database now to understand why this is a big deal I need to go through and explain what Windows recall is just in case you didn't see my last video on it Windows recall is a feature that's going to take screenshots from within Windows every few seconds and it's going to use AI to analyze those screenshots to give you essentially a searchable database of everything you do on your computer Compu now like I said in my last video this sounds like a really useful feature but if you have any concern whatsoever for your security then you probably already see the problem right off the bat and you know I'm not sure why Microsoft didn't see it to begin with either by allowing Windows to create a searchable database of everything that you do on your computer and having that database store all of that information in plain text without any encryption is kind of a really bad idea now I admit that I would love to be able to search for things that I've done on my computer but what I don't want is for anyone else to be able to search through that database also in fact I don't want there to be any chance at all that that information stored in that database could get out and to so quickly have my worst fears for this feature revealed to be true is honestly kind of frightening however I'm glad Microsoft did the right thing and pulled it but it doesn't sound like they're pulling the feature for good Windows recall will not release with co-pilot plus PCS but Microsoft did say that it will be released at a later time through a Windows update they haven't given a time frame to when that might be so that means as of right now Windows recall is pulled from the windows Insider program but in the coming weeks they claim they're going to be introducing it back into the Beta builds of windows with new security enhancements some of the changes that micros Micosoft is claiming that they're making to Windows recall is going to be for one I think it's kind of the biggest Improvement of all is that Windows recall is going to be an opt-in service originally it was going to be turned on by default and you would have to turn it off if you didn't want to use it however Microsoft is Shifting Gears here and they're going to have Windows recall turned off by default and allowing people to enable it if they want to use it when you initially set up a co-pilot plus PC Microsoft will include the windows recall feature into a setup experience so you can choose to turn it on or off initially when you set up your computer you'll essentially see a window similar to this right here and the second security enhancement that Microsoft intends to add to Windows recall is to integrate it into the windows hello environment and I think this will unfortunately require a Microsoft account but it will lock out all of the windows recall program unless the computer's webcam can verify that you're the one trying to use the program and to make all this possible Microsoft plans to encrypt the information stored by Windows recall so in order for you to access the database you'll have to reauthenticate through Windows hello now I'm going to speculate a little bit here this is definitely an unprecedented move for Microsoft it's not every day that they decide to pull headline features from upcoming products I mean one of the main features that Microsoft has put forward for their co-pilot Plus PCS was Windows Recall now these very PCS are going to be released without that feature that's like releasing a new version of office and leaving out word it's actually a pretty big deal but I have this stinking suspicion that this move was not the result of our complaints rather imagine the complaints that came from government agencies about this feature being turned on on their computers because here's the thing one of my original complaints about Windows recall was how this information could be used against you if you ever got into any legal trouble and your computer was Seena I mean you have the right to remain silent but if the government seizes your computer you they can pull whatever data they want off of it incidentally it's also a crime to remote wipe your system when it's in evidence it's called destruction of evidence and they will prosecute you for it however with that said I'm pretty sure that the government doesn't want what they do on their computers to be available through you know Freedom of Information requests or Worse government agencies where they are getting investigated for something I mean come on they don't mind spying on you they just don't want to be spied on themselves they're all about transparency unless it's transparency about anything they do right either way it would probably be best if this information simply wasn't available on your computer in the first place but unfortunately I don't have an arm system that I can use as an example to disable it luckily it doesn't have to be a Quantum Snapdragon processor because Windows recall has already been enabled on all arm CPUs using a workaround that really didn't take long did it unfortunately though I still don't have a Windows on arm system to use and it wasn't without trying either I spent 2 days trying to get an arm emulator to function and it was just too slow after 20 hours I gave up in the middle of trying to bypass the Microsoft Account requirements you know what I left it overnight and the next morning it still hadn't booted for the second time into the windows welcome experience and I figure you know what if it's going to take over 20 hours just to install Windows then the windows that I would be left with would be unusable for an example for this video I guess a ryzen 55600 isn't fast enough in order to emulate an arm-based CPU however the capabilities of an x86 system to run Windows recall is already there and at some point this feature will be on x86 systems so in anticipation of Windows recall re-release on arm and its eventual release on x86 systems I'll show you how to disable it at least theoretically I will so let's jump on the system and I'll show you you got to do it okay so here we are in Windows 11 now this is a beta build of Windows 11 right now if we go into system and then we go down into about as you can see this is 26120 770 and this is 2482 I installed this because originally I was going to try to get Windows co-pilot to work on x86 but unfortunately the code required to do it just hasn't been released by Microsoft yet so it just can't be done in x86 yet and like I said I tried to emulate it in an arm emulator and it was just way too slow so what I'm going to show you how to do is I'm going to show you how to theoretically disable it once it does come out and this should still work it does work currently to disable Windows recall on Arm based system so I'm essentially just taking these settings and applying them to x86 so what we're going to do is we're going to click on the start button and we're going to type in reg edit going to open up our registry editor and there's two different ways to do this obviously there's for the user and for the local machine so first I'm going to show you how to do it for the specific user so this way if you want Windows recall disabled but you have other users on your computer that don't then you can do this by a user by user basis as well so the first thing we're going to go into local user then we're going to go into software and then from software we're going to go into policies and then from policies we want Microsoft and then Windows now right here we're going to have to create another key so we're going to go ahead right click and you might have this on your system but if you don't you'll have to create it so go ahead and right click hit new key and then for the name of this key it's going to be Windows Ai and go ahead and copy it exactly how I have it here and I know I forget sometimes but I'll try to leave these keys in the description below if they're not there then just mention it in the comment and I'll get them in there for you and then from this point on once you create the windows AI key we're going to go ahead and create a new dword 32-bit value and the name of this one is going to be disable AI data analysis typed exactly how I have it here capitalization and all and then once you create that we're going to go ahead and open it and we're going to change the value to one and then this right here should disable Windows recall for the specific user account that we're in and you know while we're here why don't we disable co-pilot as well and to do that we're just going to go back out of Windows Ai and into the Windows key right here and we're going to go ahead and create another key so go ahead right click hit new key and then for the name of this key right here it's going to be Windows code pilot and then go ahead and hit enter and then from this point just like before we want to go ahead and create a new dword 32-bit value and the name of this one right here is going to be turn off Windows co-pilot seems pretty straightforward go ahead and copy it exactly how I have it here and hopefully I'll have it in the description below as well so once you create that go ahead and open it change the value to one and then this should disable Windows co-pilot for the specific system that you're on and if you have the windows co-pilot icon down here you can always right click and hit un unpin from taskbar as well however this right here should disable it in Windows anyway so now that we have it disabled for the user let me show you how to disable it for the machine and essentially it's exactly the same thing we just did but under local machine as well so we go under local machine and then we're going to want to go to software then from software we're going to go down into policies and then from policies we want to go into Microsoft and then in Windows and then right here we're going to do the same thing we're going to right click hit New Key and for the name of that key it's going to be Windows AI one word and then from there just like before we're going to go over here and we're going to have a new dword 32-bit value and this one's going to be disable AI data analysis go ahead and hit enter and we're going to change this value to one as well and then while we're at it we're going to jump back into Windows we're going to right click hit new key and then for the name of this key we're going to call it windows co-pilot and then hit enter and then from there just like before we're going to right click here hit new dword 32-bit value we're going to paste turn off Windows co-pilot and then we're going to go ahead and open that and hit one and this should disable the windows recall feature as well as co-pilot for the entire machine regardless of which user account you're using now if you have a system with Windows recall enabled then this should disable it for good in theory this should apply to system systems that don't yet have Windows recall on them so that way when you do receive it in an update it'll just be disabled from the start and you'll never have to deal with it but you know I'll have to revisit this subject once W Windows recall becomes more commonly available and we can actually look at ways to strip the code from Windows completely I'm sure that that will probably be the best solution but I'll have to wait until I can actually run it before I can figure out how to get rid of it but ultimately though Windows recall is not the only thing spying on you in Windows so if you're tired of Microsoft spying on you then check out this video where I go through and show you how to disable all of the different methods in which Windows spies on you on a daily basis as always you guys have a great day

Channel: CyberCPU Tech

Views: 115,132

Keywords: windows recall dead, windows recall pulled, microsoft pulled windows recall, microsoft killed windows recall, is windows recall dead, windows 11, windows 11 24h2, windows recall

Id: Mk9Q2SscbHU

Length: 14min 16sec (856 seconds)

Published: Mon Jul 01 2024