this post was submitted on 12 Jul 2024
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Windows Recall had the same issue with data storage. Interesting difference between both comment sections, there it was a bit more aggressive.
Microsoft was claiming that the data would be inaccessible to hackers (which is not true).
Signal claimed the exact opposite: that once it's on your computer, messages can be seen by malicious programs on your computer.
Signal was caught having less than ideal security. Microsoft was caught lying.
Could not find much info about that claim, but context probably was that data is not possible to be accessed without compromising device, e.g., not possible to get info over network or by compromising some central location on remote server because there is none and all that data is stored locally.
let me just highlight that if someone has access only to your signal desktop conversations, they have access to your signal desktop conversations.
if someone has access to your windows recall db, they have access to your signal desktop conversations, the pages you've browsed including in private windows, documents you've written, games you've played, social media posts you've seen, and pretty much anything you've done using that machine.
perhaps that does demand a slightly different level of concern.
True that Recall collects more than Signal, but copying actual files, browser session cookies / passwords, mailbox content if desktop mail client is used makes more sense if you have access to device. Recall is also not supposed to collect data from private sessions from popular web browsers. I assume for that it uses some hard coded list of exceptions with an option to add your own.
Both should have protected that kind of data with additional safeguards so that merely copying that data without authentication would have no value.
it makes one wonder how well that works; if it's based on OCR, does it "redact" the bounding box corresponding to the private window? What happens with overlapping windows; how does it handle windows with transparency; I can't help to think there's a high probability their solution is flaky.
Here is a video demonstration. Snapshots contain window that is in focus not the whole desktop and for exclusions I assume it would just base it on process name + additional parameters (private browser windows have same process name so must be something additional). You can also add websites for exclusions. Here is an article that lists other things that are not being captured like DRM protected content and one time WhatsApp images.
Also from support article: