In depth with Windows 11 Recall—and what Microsoft has (and hasn’t) fixed

INSUBCONTINENT EXCLUSIVE:
The Recall tray icon is always visible when the service is running, just so you're always aware of it
Sometimes it will show you snapshot previews here if you've opened the Recall app and unlocked it recently, but usually these previews are
blurred because Windows Hello is protecting them. Andrew Cunningham The Recall tray
icon is always visible when the service is running, just so you're always aware of it
Sometimes it will show you snapshot previews here if you've opened the Recall app and unlocked it recently, but usually these previews are
blurred because Windows Hello is protecting them. Andrew Cunningham When anything is being
filtered for any reason, the tray icon changes and you get a status message here, but Recall doesn't tell you what is being filtered or
why. Andrew Cunningham When anything is being filtered for any reason, the tray icon
changes and you get a status message here, but Recall doesn't tell you what is being filtered or why. Andrew
Cunningham The Recall tray icon is always visible when the service is running, just so you're always aware of it
Sometimes it will show you snapshot previews here if you've opened the Recall app and unlocked it recently, but usually these previews are
blurred because Windows Hello is protecting them. Andrew Cunningham When anything is being filtered
for any reason, the tray icon changes and you get a status message here, but Recall doesn't tell you what is being filtered or why.
Andrew Cunningham New to this version of Recall is an attempt at automated content filtering to address one
and passwords
This filtering is based on the technology Microsoft uses for Microsoft Purview Information Protection, an enterprise feature used to tag
sensitive information on business, healthcare, and government systems.This automated content filtering is hit and miss
Recall wouldn't take snapshots of a webpage with a visible credit card field, or my online banking site, or an image of my driver's license,
or a recent pay stub, or of the Bitwarden password manager while viewing credentials
But I managed to find edge cases in less than five minutes, and you'll be able to find them, too; Recall saved snapshots showing a recent
check, with the account holder's name, address, and account and routing numbers visible, and others testing it have still caught it
recording credit card information in some cases.The automated filtering is still a big improvement from before, when it would capture this
kind of information indiscriminately
But things will inevitably slip through, and the automated filtering won't help at all with other kinds of data; Recall will take pictures
of email and messaging apps without distinguishing between what's sensitive (school information for my kid, emails about Microsoft's own
product embargoes) and what isn't. Recall can be removed entirely
Andrew Cunningham The upshot is that if you capture months and months and gigabytes and gigabytes of
Recall data on your PC, it's inevitable that it will capture something you probably wouldn't want to be preserved in an easily searchable
database.One issue is that there's no easy way to check and confirm what Recall is and isn't filtering without actually scrolling through
the database and checking snapshots manually
The system tray status icon does change to display a small triangle and will show you a "some content is being filtered" status message when
something is being filtered, but the system won't tell you what it is; I have some kind of filtered app or browser tab open somewhere right
now, and I have no idea which one it is because Windows won't tell me
That any attempt at automated filtering is hit-and-miss should be expected, but more transparency would help instill trust and help users
fine-tune their filtering settings.