Microsoft has officially launched its Recall AI snapshot tool, but it still appears to be capturing sensitive information, leading one expert to say “there are [privacy] landmines everywhere.”

Microsoft Recall is the company’s AI-powered tool that takes snapshots of virtually everything the user does, converts them to text, and saves them to a database that can be searched with natural expressions. Unfortunately, there are a number of potential security and privacy implications with such a tool.

Cybersecurity expert Kevꦓin Beaumo♎nt has previously been critical of Recall, saying Microsoft is “going to deliberately set cybersecurity back a decade & endanger customers.” Beaumont’s criticism was among the avalanche of criticism that caused Microsoft to delay Recall by roughly a year, all in an effort to address the concerns.

Beaumont has taken , praising Microsoft for addressing many of the issues that wer🌜e apparent in the early builds.

Following my post and coverage online, it was announced Recall would become opt-in.. then it wouldn’t be available on Copilot+ PC at launc⭕h, then it was delayed for Windows Insider testing, then it was delayed again.

It was, frankly, a pretty baffling and ဣrare self own from Microsoft. It reminded me a lot of the Xbox One E3 launch, where Microsoft execs were misaligned with what customers wanted, and fumbled the messaging in what they were offering.

Beaumont goes 𒁏on to praise Microsoft for mജaking the feature opt-in, vs is initial opt-out, as well as for encrypting the database that stores the snapshot data. Recall now tries to filter out sensitive data, turning off snapshotting when sensitive data is onscreen.

Unfortunately, Recall’s efforts to filter sensitive data is not always as reliable as Microsoft and users might like.

The feature to filter sensitive data doesn’t appear to work reliably, across multiple 🥂devices from testing.

For example, I updated my credit card in Microsoft’s own account inte🃏rface, and Recall reco𝓀rded it.

In this snapshot♑ I’d typed an invalid credit card number, but it also captured the valid card number. It indexed both, and both were findable under “𒆙credit card” in Recall search. It captured and indexed the CVV, too.

It’s unclear why Recall saved this — possibly because I use Vivaldi as a web browser? Either way — I’d assumed it wasn’t saving this as sensitive information filte💝r was on… but it just didn’t work reliably for me. In some cases, great. In otherဣ cases, I was surprised by what it captured. You basically need to be careful to review what Recall is recording, which is difficult when it records everything you do. The best advice I can give is pause Recall before shopping online to ensure it isn’t recording, then reenable it afterwards.

It’s clear Microsoft has made significant progress in making Recall more secure, and somewhat more private. Ultimately, however, Beaumont makes the case that Recall is poorly positioned for what it does, and would be far better off serving as an accessibility tool, such as for those with Mild Cognitive Impairment.

I also think — to be perfectly honest — Microsoft’s positioning of Recall is wrong for customers. As it currently stands, I don’t think gamers will want ♏to enable Recall. I don’t think the average home user will want to enable Reca🌜ll. I think many businesses will have large barriers around PII and legal discovery — enabling users to have a photographic memory on their PC of every command they’ve typed into SSH sessions, all the PII they accessed without realising it was being recorded, and everything else they’ve done opens up a whole new class of risk, and will drive concern about suppliers using Recall.

My take would be Microsoft should reinvest in empathy. Recall is a great accessibility feature for people with conditions like Mild Cognitive Impairment (MCI). Recall should be the kind of feature people want t💧o enable, with clear use cases and risks explai🌠ned.

Given that Recall is now opt-ꦛin, it remains to be seen if customers will enable it. As Beaumont points out, Recall is oddly positioned and unlikely to appeal to much of its target audience but, ultimately, only time will tell.