Remote View

1mo ago

Windows 11 to add an AI agent that runs in background with access to personal folders, warns of security risk

www.windowslatest.com Windows 11 to add an AI agent that runs in background with access to personal folders, warns of security risk

Microsoft is moving forward with its plans to turn Windows 11 into a full-fledged “AI” operating system amidst Copilot backlash. The first big move in that direction is an experimental feature called “Agent Workspace,” which gives AI agents access to the most-used folders in your directory, such as ...

182 comments

At this point I can only assume that Microsoft is actively trying to punish me for using their products.
- Ever since Windows 8, Microsoft has shown to be a sadist.
  
  Windows ME has some shit to say.... Then Windows 8 will be next to have a chat.
  
  Windows Vista would like a word.
- Linux Mint Cinnamon is incredible, free to try/move to, and reversible.
  
  No, it's not. Horrible and outdated in many aspects. Much better options out there.

Why? Who's asking for this stuff, is there somebody out there who is really pleased with this news or is Microsoft really just that out of touch.
I don't want to have to start wearing rainbow knee-length socks, but Microsoft are pushing me towards it.
- Consumers are not the main driver of profit, speculative value is. Microsoft knows that Windows is guaranteed to be on the majority of PC's, which means they can afford to implement hostile features that increase the speculative value on data collection and AI investment.
  
  This is well said. So many people don't get that of course these companies know you hate this shit.
  They're just trying to boost their stock value and violate your privacy harder.
  
  Once you realize this, you also realize that there's no going back for them either. If by some slim chance there's enough resistance for them to pause or rollback some features, it's only temporary. The overall course remains clear and they will continue to move in that direction regardless.
  There disdain for you as a consumer could not be made any clearer.
- I don't think MS is out of touch with what the customer wants, I think they just stopped listening.
  The fact is nobody is asking for this stuff.
  I think the hope is that they build it anyway and then people will use/want it. AI is the big buzzword of the decade, just like 'cloud' was the big buzzword of last decade.
- In theory, I could use an AI for doing stuff. For example, opening ripped videos, finding the timestamp where the episode name is given, and then copying that into the video's filename. Afterwards, it can open Handbrake, use my preferred settings for audio and subs, then start the conversion of multiple files.
  However, this is all predicated on the AI not doing unwanted things - such as giving Microsoft my personal information, preferences in hentai, and passwords.
  Someday I will use agentic AI, but it will be on my terms.
- I've read this exact questions tens of times now. This is capitalism. Now why would a for profit company ever do anything? I leave you to your deductions.
  
  Won't they make more money if they don't piss everyone off.
- put the socks on >:3
  
  I'm not sure what's worse, the greybeard stereotype or the socks.
- Woah woah woah, lot's not compare fabulous knee high rainbow socks with the malware MS is putting in their OS. That's not fair to rainbows or socks.
  
  The implication is that they'll have to jump ship to Linux, and thus become a member of the unixsocks community.
- Microsoft is forcefemming en masse.
- I don't want to have to start wearing rainbow knee-length socks
  it’s pretty obvious that you do
- The socks have a bit of a learning curve, depending on what you want to do with them, but it's worth it. It's such a huge relief to not care how much more Windows is getting enshittified this week, since it's not my problem anymore.
- I work in IT for businesses and the number of times I've had to debunk AI slop hallucinations as actual troubleshooting information is not zero.
  "Yes, I can see the instructions say to check that checkbox, however, that checkbox does not exist" (screenshot of relevant control panel).
  This is just evidence, to me, that business types are already relying on AI instead of doing any actual thought or research on any topic they don't already have a deep understanding of, or are too lazy to bother with.
  Consumers are not driving this change.
  The worst part is that it's an echo chamber of yes-men that seem to be pushing for it. The AI enthusiasts trying to sell their crap, convincing the middle managers that they need their AI crap, and them buying it and asking for more/better AI crap, and the cycle continues. At no point does any of the output of any AI system provide any unique insight, or value, to anyone. The rest of us are being dragged along for the ride, regardless of what we want.
- Isn't it so they can train their AI on your personal files?
- The tech industry puts bazillions of dollars into AI development and now it has to put AI literally everywhere to make it look somehow useful. Whether the customer / user wants this or not. I guess they are hoping that people will eventually like it.

- GPL > BSD

"I see you are dual booting with Linux? I've reformatted that partition for you."
- I had this happen before but not in recent times. Not sure if others have experienced the same.
  For a while I had my bootloader on a single drive but I now have my Linux bootloader on /dev/sda and my windows on /dev/sdb and toggle it in the bios when I need to use Windows. I haven't had Windows overwrite anything in a long time. Could be a coincidence though.
  
  It’s mostly an issue when you have them sharing boot drives via partitions. If you keep them isolated to their own separate drives, Windows doesn’t tend to muck with things. It’s because Windows is bad about killing bootloaders, and automatically setting itself as the default in the boot order. So if you have it sharing a drive, it’ll nuke your boot. But if you don’t have them sharing a drive, and boot via a loader on the Linux drive, there is no boot loader on the Windows drive to nuke.
  
  I've read that dual booting Windows and Linux can have temperamental quirks and I've had my share of them.
  Now, if I'm doing that, Windows fs gets isolated and I refuse to even connect it to the internet. But, outside of a legacy automotive shop program meant for XP, I've not needed Windows for a couple years.
- One of the reasons why I never dual boot. Unfucking GRUB is not on my priority lists.
  
  Only dualboot with windows on a separate drive, that hasn't given me any issues in the past 5 years or so

The LLMs demand more data, so MS is providing it by scraping our personal hard drives. Well, not mine, but still most peoples.
I still have Win10 running on an air-gapped laptop because there are no Linux drivers for my cheap auto-feed scanner, which I'm using to scan a raft of old photos. Once that project is done, I'll put Linux Mint on it, and use it for something fun.
Gimp, Inkscape, Blender, Steam, LibreOffice, Obsidian, and Jellyfin do everything I want from a desktop.
- I have a dual-boot with Linux Mint. I don't access anything personal from my windows installation. It's just for games that don't work on Linux.
- your personal hard drive? Did you mean OneDrive?
- Oof - that reminds me - I have a LOT of scanning / digitizing to do.
- Dont forget "Everything"

How long before you can’t turn this off or uninstall it, just like Edge, or Bitlocker, or TPM, or mandatory Microsoft accounts?
- Just pirate windows server or other enterprise editions which can be used only by business
  
  Absolutely. I spent like 3 hours the other day trying to get a W11 vm running; trying to emulate TPM and faking secure boot. I gave up and installed server in 5 minutes 😑
- I'm guessing that the answer to that is .. as soon as openai collapses .. hopefully.
- I'd give it another year at best.

My mom is a retired nursing instructor, I've picked up a few things over the years. This is going to be fun when a HIPA violation occurs via MS A.I.
Honestly any industry where you see confidential information or proprietary information, could pose a massive threat to customers. Just knowing how much of a product your competitors are shipping to a location can tell you a lot of what they are planning.
- I guarantee you they will solve it by lobbying to get rid of HIPA
  
  Nah, why get rid of it if you can get exclusions for just AI, like they are doing for other stuff like copyright.
  
  At some point, all that juicy sweet medical data will be worth the 8 figure bribe to several congressmen to allow thebsale of access to the data for 'research' use to amazon and google.
  All that data is private, until it isnt.
  Dont be so innocent to think that hipaa data will never be sold, it will be eventually
- I work in healthcare (maintenance) and our computer system is so fucking locked down, I'm sure CoPilot will have some similar way of being shackled. I was surprised to learn that the terminal isn't locked, until I fooled around some and realized that every possible command was individually blocked.
  
  I work IT at a university that does medical research, and the doctors and their assistants are by FAR the biggest security pit among all the demographics: staff, students, various faculties. You could tell them you were official password inspector and flash an ID written in crayon on a used napkin and they'd just "yeah whatever, here you go, stop bothering me".
  They'd get chewed into paste by their directors after the inevitable happened and their compatriots would learn NOTHING.
  
  I have to use TaskManager now to disable co-pilot

Windows is the security risk

As if recall wasn't bad enough.
- Recall 2.0

What's the difference between big software companies and drug cartels? No, this is not the opening line of a joke.
- Drugs can at least be fun?
  
  Jokes aside, I loved Freelancer and that was Microsoft

Important to note here that if you are running Windows or a dual-boot, the new version of O&O ShutUp has a utility that allows you to delete CoPilot.

Step 1, delete Windows 11. Step 2, install Linux Mint.

How long until we can trick the Ai into deleting the System32 folder?
- That should be a fun defcon.

It's kind of amazing how much they're willing to tear down in hopes of this "" incredible "" AI vision

lol
they just keep piling on justifications for switching away
- There’s not a day that goes by that i don’t think about it. In fact i might just install a dual boot today and get reacquainted with a Linux distro. See if it runs the software I need…
  
  Look into winboat if needed
  
  you might try a live USB before you decide to commit, you can even create one inside Windows without formatting any disks
  EDIT: if for some reason you dislike Debian there are dozens of other distros out there

Time to regulate the shit out of them. They don't know what consent is, they flaunt the abuse of privacy laws.

I never bought Windows 11 for AI shit. It wasn't even what came with 11 originally. Hey Microsoft, why not make a version of Windows 11 with all the AI stuff fully turned on and call it Windows 11-AI. You sell it separately and up charge as much as you want. Just reset 11 to no AI and have it be the bare bones 11.
Edit: 2 things too. Violating user privacy could carry a risk as far as attorney-client privledge goes because attorneys work on 11 from home. So just ransaking all data could cause that right to be waved. Subpoena much?
Also, the AI-Windows could be upsold as a luxury, which means you can charge more for AI-11.
- Because they make so much more $ from selling your data. Microsoft would rather push these AI programs in an update, and bank on their users not noticing. The majority of users operate in a walled garden, they aren't editing registry files or manually running commands, so they are less likely to notice the changes. It's the power users that notice this shit, and sound the alarm.
- They can't do that. They have all of their money riding on AI. They can't possess any data that might show the all-mightly Shareholders that they bet wrong.
- Also, the AI-Windows could be upsold as a luxury, which means you can charge more for AI-11.
  ... If people were willing to pay for it, which is a tiny percentage of the small percentage of people that want AI on their windows. Even the people that are all in on chatgpt will very rarely accept paying a cent for it (and it must be a bargain considering that openAI said a few months ago that the average premium plan is a net loss for them due to the server costs)
  The way things have been going it's more likely that the AI-free version will be the upsold luxury

Oh, no thank you.
- “Remind me later…”

Scammers won’t need to social engineer grandma into giving out her SSN, they can just ask her AI many times and eventually, it will spit out absolutely everything.
Interesting Defcon presentation about how AI is a security nightmare:
DEF CON 33 - Exploiting Shadow Data from AI Models and Embeddings - Patrick Walsh
https://youtu.be/O7BI4jfEFwA

Planning on spending a months wages building a monster rig that runs Windows 11?
Cool. When it's done just take whatever your CPU, GPU, RAM is and reduce the number by 50-75%. Have fun.

Never. Ever. EVER. INSTALLING. ELEVEN.

Um, just in case, I'll have you know that I name all my folders "trans porn". It doesn't mean anything in particular.
- Transporners, more than meats the eye
- A volume of NTFS that is filled entirely by folders named "trans porn" would mean that there isn't a single folder in there that contains 2 folders.
  
  New organizing system just dropped. It's just a chain of five thousand trans porn folders. The depth means something to the creator.
  
  With Unicode, you can.
- I think I may have caused some confusion and after some research I can see why.
  Naturally I was referring to transistors and transformers, and pictures thereof. Ha ha lol guys can we forget this now?

cackles maniacally in Linux

Well, they won’t be accessing my personal folders and files because I just won’t use Windows. Thanks but no thanks. That’s really creepy.
- Pro move

What if I were to tell you the security risk was inside the OS all this time?

Hey, I've seen this one before.
- Welcome back, loyal user!
- google.

I've been watching Windows get worse and worse from the sidelines for years now, but it seems they are really ramping it up now. It has gotten so bad, I genuinely feel bad for Windows users now. But it's also pretty damn funny.
- If I didn't know better id think they're trying to get people to switch away from windows.

So Microsoft is the pig whose committed to the AI chatbot ham. There's no going back now for windows scanning my personal files for their own use. It's that or nothing from Microsoft from now on.
- My sib, they've been doing this kind of thing for years. This is not new. This is how they operate.
  If you value your privacy at all don't use MS products.

Cool, you know who doesn’t have this issue? People who uninstalled the spyware called Windows from their device.
- I cannot express how much peace of mind switching to Linux has granted me.
  "Windows now has this horrible feature! Windows now breaks user experience! Windows has ads shoved everywhere!"
  And here I am, comfortably sipping my cup of tea and watching the world burn from afar.

So it's going to be opt-in not opt-out. Just don't turn it on. Simple as. 🤷‍♂️
How to disable Copilot
- opt-in for now.... much like how they eventually snuck in their built-in spyware to screenshot your desktop behind the scenes.
  
  Looks like Microsoft learn from the Recall controversy. By making the AI stuff opt-in. Sometimes you need to take the small wins from corporations. Because what's all you going to get from them.
  much like how they eventually snuck in their built-in spyware to screenshot your desktop behind the scenes.
  Here's the minimum system requirements for Recall. Like you can see you need a NPU, BitLocker and Windows Hello enabled to use it. Also it's opt-in.
- So it’s going to be opt-in not opt-out. Just don’t turn it on. Simple as.
  "Don't worry babe, it's just the tip"
- The irony of getting advice to disable AI from HAL

Soon i will only be using windows for those games that do not run on linux yet
- I'm lucky that the type of competitive shooters that all seem to be using kernel level anti-cheat, have never appealed to me. I ditched windows on my home stuff last year and there's definitely no going back. Now if only industrial software writers would make Linux variants. Not going to hold my breath on that one though.
  
  I literally just stopped playing those multiplayer games. A usable computer that doesn't spy on me is more valuable than a handful of multiplayer games filled with jackasses. Plus once I learned what kernel level anti-cheat was, I understand why those games have so many problems and am completely unwilling to install their "anti-cheat" spyware that can just fuck with my kernel.

Seems like a bad idea then. So obviously they’ll do it!

Only 10% of Microsoft revenue is Windows, they are trying to squeeze money out of the personal data of users.

A few months ago, I did a fresh install of Windows 11 with no access to any personal files, etc, all done on a separate drive. After seeing all of the changes, I am glad I haven’t used it since. Holy moly.

They are getting more aggressive by the day it seems. Luckily I've been windows free for 10 years now. And recently, I switched almost my entire extended family to Linux mint to great success. Only my brother in law still uses win, cause of games, specifically anti cheat - the last hurdle for many people.

they got the idea from google, and samsung is doing the same.

You will use this thing we've pumped billions into!

I'm kinda just transitioning out now. I have some projects to wrap up on Windows 10 LTS that use programs that wouldn't run well through WINE. When those are done, I'll make use of Linux alternatives to that project software, and pretty much just have my Windows boot available for dire emergencies.
As it stands, most of my gaming is transitioned over, and my Windows partition just has enough space for a few games after project work.
- Same boat. W10 LTS until I'm finished wrapping up some loose ends.
  Then I'll do a VM with GPU passthrough on an old Windows for non critical things.
  I never loved or trusted Microsoft, but this (not just the uninvited transformers, all of it) is beyond unacceptable to me.

i hate this so very, very much

Where are the techbros that warned me of malware since W10 is EOL? Do you like your new AI built-in malware, cunts?
God, I gotta switch to Mint for good...

Meanwhile I am rather happy that my older (gaming) PC is not suitable for Win11 anymore, due to TPM (first I was rather disappointed). For my daily stuff I use a MacBook Pro and the old Windows PC will eventually become a Linux PC.
The only problem is my work PC/Laptop, which runs on Win11 (my company wenn "all in" MS-Cloud and stuff), and which I occasionally also use to access some private files (which rest in an encrypted cryptomator vault, when not used).

You have been warned. We're still doing it, but at least we did warn you. The fuckery of MicroShit knows no bounds.

So going forward, social engineering will also be applicable to some computers themselves instead of just the users.

I'll be killing that service asap
- Bold to assume your registry won't restore last known 'good' config. Linux mint with quickemu is a great way to use Windows if you have to.

Time to move those porn files to an external drive and encrypt.
- If you're only doing that now...
  
  This guy porns :P

Um … no thanks.

Is Apple doing this too?

windows 11 big button status confirmed.

Another one? win11: Borgy

with all the tech ceos suddenly "sounding the alarm" about the AI bubble bursting and shoveling "bloatware/spyware" into all thier devices and softwares its not really surprising.

182 comments