I'm curious about the last paragraph relating to Signal. How, exactly, have Brave managed this without also blocking screenshots? Is there a flag Signal missed?
(disclaimer: I lead privacy at Brave and wrote the article)
Windows lets browser apps (more technically, apps that have an `http` or `https` protocol handler registered) to use `SetInputScope` function to set `IS_PRIVATE` for a window. We were able to use that and have it apply for all Brave windows, and thus granularly turn off Recall without affecting non-Recall screen readers or screenshot capabilities.
Signal doesn't have protocol handlers for `http` and `https`, so it can't do the same.
THe same people who wanted web searches to appear in windows search bar, the higher ups at microsoft. they juice their numbers and say "See, look how many people are using our recall product. just like "See, look how many people are using Bing (in case of the web searches in windows search).
The most interesting part of TFA is that Microsoft is apparently deliberately restricting the ability of apps to opt out:
> We were partly inspired by Signal’s blocking of Recall. Given that Windows doesn’t let non-browser apps granularly disable Recall, Signal cleverly uses the DRM flag on their app to disable all screenshots. This breaks Recall, but unfortunately also breaks the ability to take any screenshots, including by legitimate accessibility software like screen-readers. Brave’s approach does not have this limitation since we’re able to granularly disable just Recall; regular screenshotting will still work. While it’s heartening that Microsoft recognizes that Web browsers are especially privacy-sensitive applications, we hope they offer the same granular ability to turn off Recall to all privacy-minded application developers.
This is not the kind of thing you'd do if you expect app developers to be enthusiastic about the feature.
> We tell the operating system that every Brave tab is ‘private’, so Recall never captures it.
Without this loophole Recall could take pix of password managers and other such sensitive windows. So it doesn't seem closeable without per app exceptions.
But privacy is a bug on a school laptop used by a child. Brave could have a toggle on the feature if it wants to serve that market.
There was a flurry of FOSS and local-first alternatives appearing when Recall was first announced (and more afterwards too), did anyone here end up using any of them and found them good enough? I remember trying one or two but most were basically hacks/prototypes at that point, I'm guessing at this point at least one of them developed enough to actually work well for daily use?
Until the time when Microsoft realises this and creates a privileged API just for Microsoft Recall so that It can see the screen.
Better switch to Linux. It's not perfect but I am sure that you will be fine using Linux(Unless you want to use Adobe Suite or Few Corporate applications which won't be used by many)
> Apple Intelligence is designed to protect your privacy at every step. It’s integrated into the core of your iPhone, iPad, and Mac through on-device processing. So it’s aware of your personal information without collecting your personal information. And with groundbreaking Private Cloud Compute, Apple Intelligence can draw on larger server-based models, running on Apple silicon, to handle more complex requests for you while protecting your privacy.
All the marketing fluff aside, Apple literally says Apple analyzes your personal information in the core of your device and sends it to the cloud for more complex tasks. That's orders of magnitude worse than Recall which is on-device, opt-in and fully encrypted.
A side note: there's a group policy "Allow Recall Enablement" that, it claims, when disabled "the Recall component will be in disabled state and the bits for Recall will be removed from the device".
I am so glad that every time Microsoft comes up with another insane thing to make their users hate them I do not need to care, as I am running Linux on my Desktop and Laptop.
Good on Brave for doing this, but having to continually deal with these absurd Microsoft manufactured problems has to get exhausting.
I can never understand how anyone with an interest in tech hasn't switched to Linux for their personal desktop/laptop at some point in the last 20+ years.
Why would you want to use a closed source OS controlled by a corporation with a past as checkered as Microsoft's?
Those of us doing creative production work really don't have a chance since the majority of apps only support Win/Mac. I understand the tech but cannot escape it.
Much to my annoyance, no one seems to have any interest in making a Linux compatible Quicken alternative. Until they do, I'll have to deal with Windows in some form. That's just my example though. The broader point is that there is a lot of Windows only software out there and each person only needs to have one piece of mission critical Windows only software in their life to make the friction of switching too high to bother with.
What are the prerequisites hardware-wise for Recall? If it's the case you need certain hardware for it to run properly then not having that hardware is a good migration.
They don't need to. It's performative virtue signalling. Recall is encrypted, opt-in and on-device. Apple Intelligence sends your personal data to the cloud and claims it's a feature and no one bats an eye.
I'm tired of all these apps using Recall as a lazy way to create pointless "privacy improving" features. This is pure marketing and there is absolutely no actual intention of improving user privacy.
As far as I know, Recall has never been enabled by default on any Windows-PC, even the new "Copilot+ PCs", so this should not be a concern as users have to explicitely opt-in to enable this privacy-invading feature.
First it was Signal which pretended being "forced" to create such a feature. I love Signal but I found this absolutely ridiculous.
Preventing a Window to be seen by other programs has the side-effect of making it completely invisible when using Windows remotely with tools such as Sunshine. How am I supposed to use Brave or Signal if the setting to disable this feature is not accessible because I can't even see the settings screen first?
HN really loves making Microsoft (especially Windows) appear even worse as it already is...
(disclaimer: I lead privacy at Brave and wrote the article)
> How am I supposed to use Brave or Signal if the setting to disable this feature is not accessible because I can't even see the settings screen first?
You are absolutely right. Most people here are probably commenting from their MacBooks while their personal information is being sent to the cloud by Apple Intelligence and somehow that's fine. Both Brave and Signal are seeking attention by doing performative active that do absolutely nothing to increase the privacy of the end user.
Recall is already opt-in. It's fully on-device, nothing gets sent to the cloud (unlike Apple Intelligence which gets no hate at all but is worse because it sends your data to the cloud). You can disable Recall for specific apps at the OS level.
Both Brave and Signal add a feature that already exists at the OS level and then write ludicrous attention-seeking blog posts about it. Why? If you don't trust the OS to honor your settings and not spy on you, then you should consider the device compromised and you shouldn't be using it anyway. And if you're somehow still using it, why would you enable Recall on a device that you don't trust? That scenario simply doesn't exist, yet both Brave and Signal fail to mention that in their blog posts they write to gain internet points on communities like HN.
I hope Brave considers eventually removing the crypto aspect from their product, because once all that crap is turned off it's my preferred browser. Just hard to recommend to anyone not savvy enough to turn all the goofy stuff on their "new tab" page off.
This is only tangentially related, but I just started using Brave (on Windows) in the past couple weeks in preparation for uBlock Origin being blocked in Chrome. Once I disabled all the weird service integrations/upsells it's been a decent enough experience. But the one bizarre thing I've found is typing in the YouTube comment box is laggy as hell for some reason. No other text field that I've found has this issue, just the YouTube comment box in particular is super laggy in Brave. Has anyone else experienced this?
I've been using Brave since forever and comment on YouTube a fair bit and have never experienced this. There are a few instances where I had to go to another browser to make a website work, but even those have become vanishingly small.
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[ 5.4 ms ] story [ 59.2 ms ] threadWindows lets browser apps (more technically, apps that have an `http` or `https` protocol handler registered) to use `SetInputScope` function to set `IS_PRIVATE` for a window. We were able to use that and have it apply for all Brave windows, and thus granularly turn off Recall without affecting non-Recall screen readers or screenshot capabilities.
Signal doesn't have protocol handlers for `http` and `https`, so it can't do the same.
And who is to say that Microsoft will honor the toggle, “for analytic and performance metric” purposes?
EDIT: the rant above shouldn’t cast aspersions on Brave, good on them for trying.
> We were partly inspired by Signal’s blocking of Recall. Given that Windows doesn’t let non-browser apps granularly disable Recall, Signal cleverly uses the DRM flag on their app to disable all screenshots. This breaks Recall, but unfortunately also breaks the ability to take any screenshots, including by legitimate accessibility software like screen-readers. Brave’s approach does not have this limitation since we’re able to granularly disable just Recall; regular screenshotting will still work. While it’s heartening that Microsoft recognizes that Web browsers are especially privacy-sensitive applications, we hope they offer the same granular ability to turn off Recall to all privacy-minded application developers.
This is not the kind of thing you'd do if you expect app developers to be enthusiastic about the feature.
Well some people currently pay $19/month for that feature.
https://www.rewind.ai/
> This setting applies only to Enterprise and Education editions of Windows.
That limitation looks extremely impractical.
[1]: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/client-management/...
See the blog post for how we implemented this: https://brave.com/privacy-updates/35-block-recall/#how-we-im.... We took Recall's guidance for web browsers and extended it to apply for ALL windows, not just Private Browsing: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/ai/recall/recall-w...
Without this loophole Recall could take pix of password managers and other such sensitive windows. So it doesn't seem closeable without per app exceptions.
But privacy is a bug on a school laptop used by a child. Brave could have a toggle on the feature if it wants to serve that market.
Better switch to Linux. It's not perfect but I am sure that you will be fine using Linux(Unless you want to use Adobe Suite or Few Corporate applications which won't be used by many)
> Apple Intelligence is designed to protect your privacy at every step. It’s integrated into the core of your iPhone, iPad, and Mac through on-device processing. So it’s aware of your personal information without collecting your personal information. And with groundbreaking Private Cloud Compute, Apple Intelligence can draw on larger server-based models, running on Apple silicon, to handle more complex requests for you while protecting your privacy.
Source: https://www.apple.com/apple-intelligence/
All the marketing fluff aside, Apple literally says Apple analyzes your personal information in the core of your device and sends it to the cloud for more complex tasks. That's orders of magnitude worse than Recall which is on-device, opt-in and fully encrypted.
I can't find this option under brave://settings/privacy
Why is that ?
https://signal.org/blog/signal-doesnt-recall/
wikileaks was 15 years ago. tech has come long way.
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/client-management/...
how is this even legal?
Good on Brave for doing this, but having to continually deal with these absurd Microsoft manufactured problems has to get exhausting.
Why would you want to use a closed source OS controlled by a corporation with a past as checkered as Microsoft's?
Windows still wins, mac is great for most of those points except for gaming and torrents, Linux bad at most of those.
As far as I know, Recall has never been enabled by default on any Windows-PC, even the new "Copilot+ PCs", so this should not be a concern as users have to explicitely opt-in to enable this privacy-invading feature.
First it was Signal which pretended being "forced" to create such a feature. I love Signal but I found this absolutely ridiculous.
Preventing a Window to be seen by other programs has the side-effect of making it completely invisible when using Windows remotely with tools such as Sunshine. How am I supposed to use Brave or Signal if the setting to disable this feature is not accessible because I can't even see the settings screen first?
HN really loves making Microsoft (especially Windows) appear even worse as it already is...
> How am I supposed to use Brave or Signal if the setting to disable this feature is not accessible because I can't even see the settings screen first?
Brave's implementation shouldn't block screen readers or screenshot tools. It only blocks Recall. See the blog post: https://brave.com/privacy-updates/35-block-recall#disabling-...
Recall is already opt-in. It's fully on-device, nothing gets sent to the cloud (unlike Apple Intelligence which gets no hate at all but is worse because it sends your data to the cloud). You can disable Recall for specific apps at the OS level.
Both Brave and Signal add a feature that already exists at the OS level and then write ludicrous attention-seeking blog posts about it. Why? If you don't trust the OS to honor your settings and not spy on you, then you should consider the device compromised and you shouldn't be using it anyway. And if you're somehow still using it, why would you enable Recall on a device that you don't trust? That scenario simply doesn't exist, yet both Brave and Signal fail to mention that in their blog posts they write to gain internet points on communities like HN.
Could it be an extension?