this post was submitted on 23 Oct 2024
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[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 month ago (1 children)

To be clear, I installed a new Linux system totally separate to this and just coincidental, and there's still some things I need to use Windows for, so it's not going anywhere soon. But for sure this whole thing is one more reason to be suspicious of Microsoft.

As I said, I am not sure there's any evidence showing it's actually doing anything yet. None I've seen at least.

But, I think there's some very suspicious points that stand out to me.

  • Installed by default
  • Enabled by default
  • Hidden from the user unless they specify the feature by name from command line (listing from command line doesn't include it either). And I wonder if being searchable by name was an accident that will be patched out next time.

If this wasn't going to be anything to do with the recall functionality that has been previously described, then I feel fairly sure they would have posted an announcement about it by now. Silence in general is a bad thing for this kind of thing in my experience.

But, since it's not doing anything now I'm more in a "wait and see" stance personally.

[–] [email protected] -2 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Well, I don't know how long this has been a thing or how prominent it is. I haven't seen it in the more mainstream news channels, this thread was my first notice. I expect if people start to freak out in larger, more mainstream circles they may want to address it. Right now it's only reached a few people, I think.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 month ago (1 children)

There's been a lot of youtube videos made on the tech side of it. But, like I say they all make a fair point. It's installed, enabled and hidden. But none of them have shown any evidence of it actually collecting data yet.

This arrived in the 24H2 windows update I think it was about a week ago.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Frankly that sounds like "OK, I did install a camera in your bedroom, but it's not like it's on or anything!"

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 month ago

Definitely. And it's actually "We installed a camera in your bedroom, but it's hidden, you cannot remove it. It's enabled but don't worry it's not recording".

I just ideally would like Microsoft to say something. Because at the moment it's super weird to enable it on PCs that it's not meant to run on.