Brave blocks Microsoft Recall by default

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...

Cool story bruh. It was initially enabled by default and by design had intern level security.

Microsoft has earned, many times over, its hate.

(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?

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-...

In a beta that was never released to the public.

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.