UK launches investigation into Microsoft’s Recall feature due to potential security risks for users

The Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) in the UK is launching an investigation into Recall, a new feature from Microsoft based on artificial intelligence. It will be checked for potential risks to user security. This was reported by Sky News.

“We are making enquiries with Microsoft to understand the safeguards in place to protect user privacy,” said the ICO representative.

Recall is a new feature that Microsoft introduced recently. It will be available only to owners of Copilot+ computers with NPU processors.

It will save screenshots of any user activity – browser tabs, open folders or files, messenger messages, and even passwords if they were visible on the screen. The user will be able to find them at any time.

Despite the fact that the company claims that all screenshots will be stored locally on users’ computers and no one else will have access to them, such a large amount of data in one place still raises concerns for the ICO.

In particular, there are fears that these screenshots will not be encrypted or hidden in any way, which means that if an attacker can gain access to a computer with the Recall function, they will also be able to access all the activities of the past three months.