3 ms·

It was surely just schedule pressure. There's no system-visible API for "incognito mode" (nor should there be, obviously, as it would defeat the purpose) so th

by ajross 2y ago

It was surely just schedule pressure. There's no system-visible API for "incognito mode" (nor should there be, obviously, as it would defeat the purpose) so they just skipped it. I dunno, and I say this as someone who works for a competitor and has no love for MS... a lot of the responses here seem really uncharitable. This isn't bad faith, it's just a rushed product with some poor planning. If Apple had rolled this same feature out with glitz and a giant slideshow about privacy and explained how everything was encrypted and never left the device, we'd all be crowing about how great it is even if it too was screenshotting incognito windows.

twinge 2y ago
It seems contrary to their docs[0]: > Recall won’t save any content from your private browsing activity when you’re using Microsoft Edge, Firefox, Opera, Google Chrome, or other Chromium-based browsers. Without a system-level incognito mode feature I could see apps allowing users to denote their windows as DRM content to avoid Recall. 0: https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/privacy-and-control-over-your-recall-experience-d404f672-7647-41e5-886c-a3c59680af15 https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/privacy-and-cont...
- oefrha 2y ago
  > apps allowing users to denote their windows as DRM content to avoid Recall That would prevent user-initiated screen captures as well. Not a good idea for browsers at least.
oefrha 2y ago
I thought about it for a minute, and sure, given a chrome.exe HWND, I can't think of a way to tell if it's Incognito.[1] But companies work with important vendors on major features all the time. If they think it's important enough to exclude private windows in Edge, they surely could have worked with Google to figure out something. > nor should there be, obviously, as it would defeat the purpose No it doesn't. Incognito mode is about leaving no trace on disk, that's all. Recall is the one defeating that purpose right now, if TFA is accurate. [1] Not saying it's impossible. Only that I can't think of a straightforward solution in a pinch with my limited Windows experience and hacking skills.
- wizzwizz4 2y ago
  In Firefox, check for "Private Browsing" in the titlebar. In Tor Browser… default to "it's private". In stock Chromium, look for the string "Incognito" near the Chrome hamburger icon (e.g. via IAccessible2). It's not hard to support this functionality in the major browsers: it'd take me all of 15 minutes.
  - reverius42 2y ago
    What about localization? What if a release of the browser changes the string?
klabb3 2y ago
> a lot of the responses here seem really uncharitable. This isn't bad faith, it's just a rushed product with some poor planning. But it’s not the product people are criticizing, at all. Similar tools have existed for a long time and have not raised eyebrows except when it’s been forced by an employer or a school. It’s that it’s the OS putting an always on and enabled-by-default spyware on devices that are frequently shared by family members, when their average users who barely know what a web browser is and will just accept recommended defaults. Speaking of which, the whole spiel about Edge/IE is precisely their aggressive defaults. It’s the same here. If you’re a startup building custom tools you can talk about rushed products and assume good intent. This software is built by a software company with some of the worlds best software engineers all the way up to the top. I mean, people trust them with everything from business secrets to payment details to mission critical services. This is clearly not a “rushed product oopsie”, it’s blatant disregard for privacy, and to a lesser extent, security. I’m avoiding windows like the plague, but since seeing my mom get bombarded with “recommended Microsoft defaults” over the last decade or so, I’m convinced MS is deliberately exploiting uninformed users as much as they can get away with, while leaving hidden options for power users to disable the ads and the crapware so they don’t leave. This total recall debacle is probably a similar attempt at using their unknowing user base to train their new AI models, or similar. If it was a genuinely useful product it would not be enabled by default.
- ajross 2y ago
  > It’s that it’s the OS putting an always on and enabled-by-default spyware on devices that are frequently shared And I have to repeat: if Apple Computer had pushed the same product, but with a slide talking about how it was all locally encrypted and unextractable and tied to both the device and the user account, HN would be celebrating the attention to privacy even though macs too are "frequently shared". And the reasoning would be how strong the security engineering was around the process, because we love that stuff and we love macs. MS doesn't get the same benefit of the doubt, and it leaks into the technical content of the argument, and that's wrong. And FWIW I'm mostly just handwaving the technical details. I mean, do we know for a fact that MS is *not* encrypting this with a TPM-managed key tied to the user account? I bet they are, honestly.
patrick451 2y ago
> a lot of the responses here seem really uncharitable. It's Microsoft. There no reason to extend any charity whatsoever when talking about this company.
JohnFen 2y ago
> we'd all be crowing about how great it is Not all of us, no.

by ajross 2y ago

twinge 2y ago

It seems contrary to their docs[0]: > Recall won’t save any content from your private browsing activity when you’re using Microsoft Edge, Firefox, Opera, Google Chrome, or other Chromium-based browsers. Without a system-level incognito mode feature I could see apps allowing users to denote their windows as DRM content to avoid Recall. 0: https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/privacy-and-control-over-your-recall-experience-d404f672-7647-41e5-886c-a3c59680af15 https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/privacy-and-cont...

oefrha 2y ago
> apps allowing users to denote their windows as DRM content to avoid Recall That would prevent user-initiated screen captures as well. Not a good idea for browsers at least.

oefrha 2y ago

I thought about it for a minute, and sure, given a chrome.exe HWND, I can't think of a way to tell if it's Incognito.[1] But companies work with important vendors on major features all the time. If they think it's important enough to exclude private windows in Edge, they surely could have worked with Google to figure out something. > nor should there be, obviously, as it would defeat the purpose No it doesn't. Incognito mode is about leaving no trace on disk, that's all. Recall is the one defeating that purpose right now, if TFA is accurate. [1] Not saying it's impossible. Only that I can't think of a straightforward solution in a pinch with my limited Windows experience and hacking skills.

wizzwizz4 2y ago
In Firefox, check for "Private Browsing" in the titlebar. In Tor Browser… default to "it's private". In stock Chromium, look for the string "Incognito" near the Chrome hamburger icon (e.g. via IAccessible2). It's not hard to support this functionality in the major browsers: it'd take me all of 15 minutes.
- reverius42 2y ago
  What about localization? What if a release of the browser changes the string?

klabb3 2y ago

> a lot of the responses here seem really uncharitable. This isn't bad faith, it's just a rushed product with some poor planning. But it’s not the product people are criticizing, at all. Similar tools have existed for a long time and have not raised eyebrows except when it’s been forced by an employer or a school. It’s that it’s the OS putting an always on and enabled-by-default spyware on devices that are frequently shared by family members, when their average users who barely know what a web browser is and will just accept recommended defaults. Speaking of which, the whole spiel about Edge/IE is precisely their aggressive defaults. It’s the same here. If you’re a startup building custom tools you can talk about rushed products and assume good intent. This software is built by a software company with some of the worlds best software engineers all the way up to the top. I mean, people trust them with everything from business secrets to payment details to mission critical services. This is clearly not a “rushed product oopsie”, it’s blatant disregard for privacy, and to a lesser extent, security. I’m avoiding windows like the plague, but since seeing my mom get bombarded with “recommended Microsoft defaults” over the last decade or so, I’m convinced MS is deliberately exploiting uninformed users as much as they can get away with, while leaving hidden options for power users to disable the ads and the crapware so they don’t leave. This total recall debacle is probably a similar attempt at using their unknowing user base to train their new AI models, or similar. If it was a genuinely useful product it would not be enabled by default.

ajross 2y ago
> It’s that it’s the OS putting an always on and enabled-by-default spyware on devices that are frequently shared And I have to repeat: if Apple Computer had pushed the same product, but with a slide talking about how it was all locally encrypted and unextractable and tied to both the device and the user account, HN would be celebrating the attention to privacy even though macs too are "frequently shared". And the reasoning would be how strong the security engineering was around the process, because we love that stuff and we love macs. MS doesn't get the same benefit of the doubt, and it leaks into the technical content of the argument, and that's wrong. And FWIW I'm mostly just handwaving the technical details. I mean, do we know for a fact that MS is *not* encrypting this with a TPM-managed key tied to the user account? I bet they are, honestly.

patrick451 2y ago

> a lot of the responses here seem really uncharitable. It's Microsoft. There no reason to extend any charity whatsoever when talking about this company.

JohnFen 2y ago

> we'd all be crowing about how great it is Not all of us, no.