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Microsoft will restrict its controversial Recall feature even more than planned for business customers who adopt Windows 11 Copilot+ PCs.
Recall will be disabled by default, according to Microsoft, citing input from enterprise customers.
"We heard your feedback on needing a secure and controllable experience for using Recall in your organizations, and it will be,” Microsoft CVP Pavan Davuluri said in a blog post. “Recall will be disabled by default, and IT will enable this feature through new policies before it can be made available to employees for opting in.”
The restriction goes further than merely asking users to opt into Recall, which is Microsoft’s current stance on rolling out the feature to consumers. Instead, it looks like business users won’t even see the option unless their IT administrator activates Recall for their PC. And even then, it’ll still be up to the business user to consent.
(Credit: Microsoft)The company first introduced Recall in May as a way to quickly pull up any activity, including old websites, files, and other data you accessed on the PC. Microsoft originally sought to activate the feature by default across Copilot+ PCs, but the release has been delayed amid concerns that Recall could also be abused to act as spyware.
One security researcher even created a demo showing that malware could trivially exploit Recall to loot an entire user history from an infected PC.
In today's blog post, Davuluri said Microsoft will still ship Recall, but plans to include "meaningful security enhancements," such as data encryption. "Our goal is to ensure that your employee and organization data is protected from the beginning, and we look forward to hearing your feedback on this new experience,” he says.
In other words, Microsoft isn’t giving up on Recall despite the security concerns. The company is slated to ship Recall as a preview release for Windows Insiders on Copilot+ PCs next month. There's no firm launch date for a consumer release, but Microsoft has said users will be able to remove it if they have concerns.