Signal on Windows disables screenshot-taking via DRM tools to protect from recording sensitive information via “Recall”:

Microsoft Recall takes screenshots of your apps every few seconds as you use your computer and then stores them in an easily searchable database. In Microsoft’s own words, its goal is to act as a sort of “photographic memory” for everything that you do on your computer. The words that other people chose to describe Recall upon its debut were decidedly less positive.

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Apps like Signal have essentially no control over what content Recall is able to capture, and implementing “DRM” that works for you (not against you) is the best choice that we had. It’s like a scene in a movie where the villain has switched sides, and you can’t screenshot this one by default either.

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Microsoft has launched Recall without granular settings for app developers that would enable Signal to easily protect privacy, which is a glaring omission that limits our choices.

I wonder whether this makes Windows uncomfortable to use for normal users, not just nerds, when a somewhat popular messenger like this needs to protect you from the operating system.

It’s one thing to install a 3rd party tool that looks like it could potentially do nasty things. The neckbeards will cry for the source and compile it from scratch, because binary distributions are inherently not worth your trust. Now for normal users, at least the OS usually has got your back and implements strong protections and permissions.

But if the OS vendor rolls out a feature that records your computer activity, and if the same OS vendor rolls out a feature that enables 3rd party developers to block recording, do you really trust this proclaimed self-censoring?

Microsoft Recall documentation:

Like other Windows apps, such as the Snipping Tool, Recall won’t store digital rights management (DRM) content. Recall doesn’t record audio or save continuous video. It also doesn’t save game video when Game Mode is active on platforms that support it.

Does it really not?

It could just as well scrape everything and pretend that it never ‘saw’ the contents of the app’s window. After all, since this is the 1st party OS, its own reporting tools, video export, etc. are truly a black box to you, the user. The blackest of black boxes, compared with binary programs from 3rd party devs.

There’s no potential for true transparency. It’s all theater.

The only thing that makes these claims work in practice is trusting them. Trust that they aren’t the baddies in this story. (We’re talking about Microsoft, remember.)

Now do they have earned the trust? Well … *stares at ads in the start menu*

See also: Criticism of Microsoft, if googling for “is Microsoft evil” doesn’t satisfy you.