It’s a nightmare scenario for Microsoft. The headlining feature of its new Copilot+ PC initiative, which is supposed to drive millions of PC sales over the next couple of years, is under significant fire for being what many say is a major breach of privacy and security on Windows. That feature in question is Windows Recall, a new AI tool designed to remember everything you do on Windows. The feature that we never asked and never wanted it.
Microsoft, has done a lot to degrade the Windows user experience over the last few years. Everything from obtrusive advertisements to full-screen popups, ignoring app defaults, forcing a Microsoft Account, and more have eroded the trust relationship between Windows users and Microsoft.
It’s no surprise that users are already assuming that Microsoft will eventually end up collecting that data and using it to shape advertisements for you. That really would be a huge invasion of privacy, and people fully expect Microsoft to do it, and it’s those bad Windows practices that have led people to this conclusion.
This is status quo for every large corporation. Microsoft, Apple, Amazon, EVERY SOCIAL MEDIA PLATFORM, Roku… They all, ALL, push boundaries to see what they can get away with to not only sell you something, but also make you the thing they sell. Sometimes they’re bold enough to make it public what they’re doing, sometimes, it’s a leak that happens when people find out how little the company actually cares about it’s users (Apple, so many user data leaks).
My bigger concern is that almost every company now has it in their contracts/terms of services, that all users are not allowed to participate in a lawsuit, be it class action, or court case against them Most of them even have a maximum sue limit too! There’s a lot that have a rule that initial arbitration cannot have a lawyer, but that won’t be enforced.
Is that a valid and enforceable clause though, even if i clicked “i agree”?
It should be illegal to include unenforceable clauses in any TOS or contract since it deceitfully implies it means something.
I love it when Apple pushes advertising that touts their focus on privacy… when in reality, they’re breaching user privacy in all the ways that every other company does.
A big reason Apple focuses on privacy and apps not being able to track the user is because they want to keep all that data for themselves. None of the restrictions they’ve introduced apply to first-party apps. It gives them ad targeting data that no other company can collect. They do have their own ad network (for things like ads in the App Store), and last I heard, they wanted to expand it.