Microsoft's OneDrive spots your mates, remembers their faces, and won't forget easily Microsoft's OneDrive is increasing the creepiness quotient by using AI to spot faces in photos and group images accordingly. Don't worry, it can be turned off – three times a year. This writer has been enrolled in a OneDrive feature on mobile to group photos by people. We're not alone – others have also reported it turning up …
It doesn't matter if you change the setting to sod off or do me. Given M$'s past behaviour, a "bug" will override your choice and turn the feature on whether you like it or not. Maybe M$ can staple it to my prostate right next to CoPilot
Don't worry. When a bug causes us to revert the setting, it won't count as one of your three times. Well, initially it will, but after a 6 month wait we can change it back if you ask. Just don't change it back manually, otherwise we'll be forced to count both of those times. Sorry, that's how the AI works.
More like when the setting is reverted to "On" as default with every update, it will count. And the updates aren't optional.
It's like someone was saying the other day about McKinsey wondering how to monetise data-stealing AI services that nobody needs or wants: you don't sell the services, you sell the off switch.
Three times a year. That means three specific dates a year. On 19th May, 23rd August, 16th November. The time allowed to disable this option is a five minute window at Midnight UTC.
If you miss those time slots, you can wait for the next one.
Note, terms and conditions apply and Microsoft withhold the right to change these dates without warning. Updated dates will be found in the Ts and Cs. And everyone reads those so all is fine.
It must be controlled by a policy setting or registry setting (or both), which means, in the worst case one should be able to write an app to make sure after every boot & login the setting is switched to the off state if it's not already in that state. No doubt OOshutup will also deal with it when the time comes.
OneDrive? AFAIK this will happen on Microsoft's cloud and will be unaffected by any policy the lusers might try to enforce locally. The only solution is to not let your pictures wander to OneDrive. Once they're there, they belong to Microsoft.
Thou shalt change the settings three times, no more, no less. Three shalt be the number thou shalt make changes, and the number of the changes shalt be three. Four changes shalt thou not make, nor either makest thou two changes, excepting that thou then proceed to three changes.. Five is right out!
"Thou shalt change the settings three times, no more, no less. ....
Failure to comply will likely result in your throat being forcibly† torn out by a killer white rabbit.
† I would concede it is difficult to conceive of "gently" in this context.
All of these terms and conditions are written by lawyers and riddled with loopholes in the exact same way that threat actors worm in and leave APTs in software.
Realistically, there's no way to parse out who is really doing what with your data, assuming they don't flagrantly violate their terms and conditions as big tech is often wont to do. After all, even if they get caught, what are you going to do about it?
How do you even compute damages for loss of privacy?
How do you even determine the scope of what is shared / lent / given / copied / grouped / sold / leased / teasingly flashed or whatever between companies?
You either trust a company or you don't, based on what they've been caught doing in the past.
Personally, I don't trust Microsoft further than I can throw their oddly-bloated founder who somehow bears an uncanny resemblance to the pregnant man emoji.
Nobody should trust Alphabet or Meta, at all, ever.
... terms and conditions are written by lawyers and riddled with loopholes ...
In some jurisdictions unfair or unreasonable terms and conditions with a general consumer can be unenforceable in law. However, if there are complex terms and conditions a corporate lawyer could keep the whole thing stuck in the court system until your money runs out.
And you can find out for sure if this is true for your specific case after several years and millions of dollars / pounds / Euros / whatever in legal fees.
You can even try to figure out if you and your precious little votes mean more to your government than donations from these companies do.
Nothing to worry about !!!
How else would MS get to test out their 'AI' unless you allow them total access to your 'Data' for yourtheir benefit !!!
Of course, the data is safe and would NEVER be misused !!!
Every day in Every way I feel Safer & Safer knowing that the Tech Behemoths & 'AI' are looking after my Best Interests !!!
:)
Well, you do not have standing.
At least, that will be the reason they give you. Unless, you prove that your photograph was misappropriated and misused.
Then they say, go sue the person(s) who misappropriated your photograph.
All in all, Microsoft will say it is a Not-A-Microsoft-Problem situation and you should bother someone else.
It might be an interesting legal point.
Whilst the photograph (or copyright in it) may not be yours the information about you might be regarded as your personal data - which is protected in some jurisdictions.
An individual collecting/creating that data for personal use (e.g. a 'friend' using it to catalogue their photo's) could well be exempt, but a corporation or individual using it for business generally would not.
Of course, having rights and being able to enforce them are quite different things.
No lawyer, but I'm afraid b0llchit is right: The legal culprit in this case is the person who gave them the picture, Microsoft didn't have any interaction with you personally.
The only way you could enforce this is if there was a law requiring Microsoft to demand written statements that all persons in a given picture are allowing (ab)use of their likeness, but this law doesn't exist and has little chance of being voted, does it. Till then Microsoft can legally assume the person handing them the picture has full rights on everything in it and can freely lease them to Microsoft.
Unless you are famous and wealthy, you don't have a "right to privacy" with your face if someone else took a picture of it, especially in a public place. But once that picture is on commercial servers and linked to PII such as a name and said commercial entity is now processing that data, it could be a whole other kettle of fish in legal terms. But when $commercial_Entity has many expensive lawyers on staff and can outspend a government regulator over many years of court cases and appeals, it all starts become rather moot since technology and the people responsible will have moved on by then.
"Unless you are famous and wealthy, you don't have a "right to privacy" with your face if someone else took a picture of it, especially in a public place."
That would depend on which country you are in. Germany, for example, has laws that do impact on photography in a public place:
https://allaboutberlin.com/guides/photography-laws-germany
https://www.lhr-law.de/en/thema/media-law/the-right-to-your-own-image/
"But once that picture is on commercial servers and linked to PII such as a name and said commercial entity is now processing that data, it could be a whole other kettle of fish in legal terms."
Again it's not clear which country/countries you are referring to but for EU & UK "PII" is an incorrect term, "personal data" (as per (EU) GDPR and UK GDPR) is the correct term and it has a more expansive definition than the USA term "PII".
> and that isn't what the Microsoft description says
But it is what Microsoft does, so I'm with the author: If there is money involved Microsoft doesn't take "no" for an answer. They will obligingly rectify your momentary error of judgment and turn this precious feature back on at the earliest opportunity, i.e. next time they update their code.
(Or at least they will assume it's on, so the update will simply override your mismatched setting.)
"Yes, I think this article jumps to the conclusion that the setting turns back on by itself, and that isn't what the Microsoft description says"
False. That is not a conclusion, it's observed and documented action happening in every update in almost any privacy related settings in Windows. Has been on *very long time*.
It's absolutely irrelevant what their description says *now*: It will be 'updated' at next forced update.
Opt-out of course, if any option is given in the first place: The default is always opt-in. Of course it is and f**k the GDPR.
They all do, all of the time. The timesheet app we use for work will ask, on an almost weekly basis "how do you like our software, please take this short survey". Yes, No and Don't Bother Me. Clicking the Don't Bother Me button results in a screen stating quite clearly, "Thanks for that, we'll never ask you again". Except every couple of months, I have to sign in again and the survey requests start appearing again and I have to turn them off. Again. <sigh> It seem, to the App authors, that "never" means "never again during the currently logged in session".
https://hardware.slashdot.org/story/25/10/11/0238213/microsofts-onedrive-begins-testing-face-recognizing-ai-for-photos-for-some-preview-users#microsoft_spokesperson
Slashdot: What's the reason OneDrive tells users this setting can only be turned off 3 times a year? (And are those any three times — or does that mean three specific days, like Christmas, New Year's Day, etc.)
[Microsoft's publicist chose not to answer this question.]
... Which if MS management hadn't redacted it, probably would have said:
"Yes, we hear you've called this sort of thing a 'Dark Pattern'. How cute. Yes, we just don't want you turning it off, really. The more of you who do, the less dosh we get from Mr. Ellison et al."
Why 3 times a year? Because they are paid the ingress cost and the compute costs and they don’t want people to flick the setting on/off/on/off. They already knew this would create resource issues in Azure so they set the retention to 30days anyway. I guess they don’t do a good job of remembering which pictures are already processed and so are worried about thrashing the upload/compute each time it’s toggled on/off/on. I bet the database backend ‘delete user’s data’ request is heavy and slow so they want to protect the backend. It’s a crap UX and suggests there’s a crap architecture/implementation behind it.
Apple have had this feature on iOS for years - I suspect the difference is that the ‘people’ metadata is stored on the user-device on the Apple implementation and not some central creepy database (Microsoft implementation).
Well, they at least "think different". Especially when it comes to knowing the difference between an adjective and an adverb.
I remember the brief moment when YouTube tested out telling you what they actually do when you tell them you don’t want to see more of something (“We won’t show this to you for a while.”)
That honesty seemed to last for all of a few days, then back to the lie that they were doing what you actually wanted.
"I remember the brief moment when YouTube tested out telling you what they actually do when you tell them you don’t want to see more of something (“We won’t show this to you for a while.”)"
Speaking of which, has anyone else noticed in the "suggestions" column on the right that there is quite a few "free movie with ads" every time now? I've never seen that before and they are rarely related to the currently selected video, unlike the "normal" suggestions which, at least at the top of the column are usually more from the same account or at least somewhat related to current video.
Or Cryptomator (open source) to encrypt the file client side before uploading to any cloud service.
O yes, Mega.
Article 16 of Terms of Service:
We may at any time change the fees for our services (other than those you have already paid) and/or any additional terms of any services we provide to you, as long as we give you notice (via email, SMS, pop-up or other prominent notice on our websites, or via a message in the relevant service). If we only make minor changes or if we only change our fees, these will become effective when notified. (My emphasis)
See the trap?
Fun exercise: Find a ToS which doesn't contain this clause... :-D
Not defending Mega (first time I ever heard about it), just pointing out that all ToSses contain a "we might at any time change our terms of service" part and thus it's not overly suspicious in itself.
GNU has multiple kernels.
The GNU GRUB OS for example contains quite a fine kernel.
Hurd is going quite well, with 64bit and SMP now supported, although GNU Emacs and other GNU packages all run fine for years and years now (the important thing).
You can of course instead go with GNU Linux-libre, as that is another supported kernel; https://www.gnu.org/software/linux-libre/
>> Why would anyone continue to be a proprietary serf when they can install GNU and have freedom, all for the low price of 0£?
Because systemd is spreading. I'm nuking my mx-linux box and installing FreeBSD because I want an OS whose direction isn't ultimately subject to the diktats of IBM (IBM owns RedHat, and. MX-Linux has already started the move to systemd)
And my Windows 10 box had its final update last night, so I expect it to run just fine in the future. And if something bad happens, that's what backups are for. And Linux doesn't support 6 x 4k screens on 2 video cards with load-sharing. And it never will.
For me, October 14 was freedom day (yes, all my hardware is new enough it supports Windows 11. No, don't want it, same as I don't want LOL crap or the "free as in you're the product" cloud spyware. Or anything google or facebook , for that matter. Too OLD for that shit.
>Because systemd is spreading
Just don't run it then? Install Gentoo-libre and the without-systemd repo.
There are also many GNU/Linux-libre distros with an installer available that don't have systemd like Guix, Parabola, Hyperbola and many other proprietary ones; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_GNU/Linux_distributions?useskin=monobook#Technical
It really doesn't matter what GNU distro you have installed - as long as you have GNU, you can install any package that depends on GNU - although, if the wanted version of that package isn't in the distro's repos, then you'll need to compile from source (which is easy if the package uses correct GNU autotools and is decently written).
>I'm nuking my mx-linux box and installing FreeBSD because I want an OS whose direction isn't ultimately subject to the diktats of IBM
Moving to NonFreeBSD, which has a direction ultimately subject to the diktats of the master of all the proprietary software included by default and recommenced for install would be a major fail.
>And my Windows 10 box had its final update last night, so I expect it to run just fine in the future.
It's not yours - it's microsoft's.
I don't have a WC, as why would I have useless computers?
>Linux doesn't support 6 x 4k screens on 2 video cards with load-sharing. And it never will.
The kernel, Linux does in fact contain several drivers that support outputting to 6 4k screens between 2 video cards.
Load sharing is handled by mesa, not Linux, via the DRI_PRIME environmental variable that allocates a program to a specific GPU.
As for distribution of the same program between 2 GPUs with output synchronization, if you want that convenient feature, you'll need to add it to the driver (most GPU driver developers don't have multiple GPU systems after all).
SLI and crossfire etc are no longer supported anymore, thus in the future no kernel or OS will support that.
I'm fairly sure Patrick is still not doing systemd, still going with init scripts on Slackware (but I've gotten lazy and just do Fedora and Kubuntu these days). It's a little tricky, but if you want an free and open OS without systemd, that's an option. And if you don't like stuff, well, with Slackware, you can just build your own. I did for years.
Slackware is proprietary software - it comes with a proprietary version of Linux and also a bunch of other proprietary software too, like a image viewer you aren't allowed to modify (the proprietary software may be distributed in a tar that needs to be extracted before execution, but that is a recommendation that the user run proprietary software and that software still restricts the user even in a tarred state).
Although, there is a free replacement to Slackware; https://www.freenix.net/
Your very own digital Panopticon. The people building this don't seem to realize it will eventually be turned on them. Not that it matters as the IRS and the spooks already have access to your confidential records.
The Digital Panopticon: Surveillance Technologies, Big Data, and the Crisis of Democratic Societies
There are, I have no doubt, people who will gratefully use, even welcome, the core feature of this.
But what MS ( and other big tech companies ) do is add in a whole lot of other stuff round itfor no justifiable reason- like making it difficult to not use.
Microsoft’s egregious spreading of this stuff is beyond belief - but the likes of Meta aren't far behind.
AI "features" are just the most recent and worst examples of this.
There's an argument for making AI stuff available to users. But the tech companies are trying to make it unavoidable. So yes, have face recognition in OneNote or that silly AI symbol in Whatsapp. But that doesn't mean it has to be forced on to users.
It would be really helpful for El Reg to always embed a How To Turn It Off, right there in the article.
Same for Recall, for those of us who were unfortunate enough to either be forced to run a work machine with Win11, with an IT dept that one doesn't trust to even know one of these features exists (I wish I was kidding, oh, how I wish). But also for the inevitable plethora of relatives who found themselves in the grip of Microsoft's enforced "opt-out-if-you-can" "enhancements".
I say putting it here, because we all know that web searching has become useless and GPTs are often hopelessly out of date.
There are no instructions to be added to the article.
Even if the user goes and disables it - chances are that it'll go and re-enable seconds later (with microsoft, if you disable a "privacy option", leave the form and come back - you'll find that it re-enabled) and after than happens 3 times it's forced on.
Therefore, the only appropriate solution is to never use onedrive, or better to go install GNU.
>> Unlike Google sotrage I can't separate out my photos from OneDrive
You can delete OneDrive. And OneNote. And Office.Did it years ago, problem solved. Same as I banished everything Google and Facebook. And all free cloud services, except iMessage and Facetime. For everything else, I lease server space for my own domains.
Though I might check out Discord. Retirement leaves time for indulging in games.
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given the stealth in which this appears to have been implemented, I would not be surprised if disabling the feature just stops M$ telling you about it but it actually happens in the background.
Sounds like the OSA thing where file share hoisters are required to check your files against provided hashes & then report you for violations or near misses.
creepy
Linux is now fully ready for the desktop!!
Not as stealthy as you think. Uninstall it, block the explorer extension if you don't trust that it is really gone and so on. You can even uninstall it if you run Office356 (or is it called Microsoft356 again?). There are enough ways to achieve that. If you want to get rid of defender on a Windows 10/11 machine, that is a different task.
Linux will never be ready for the desktop, as it doesn't operate by itself.
GNU/Linux was ready for the desktop in 1995, as finally you could use a recent computer in freedom again (alas that freedom was savagely ripped away with the inclusion of the first of many proprietary programs in Linux in 1996).
FB just loves it when their (L)users upload photos of their friends and family members and label them so the system can identify them the next time they upload photos. Very handy. The problem is that it won't be limited to just that one user's account. Another person can upload of photos of you being naughty at the next company Christmas party after you have over-indulged and FB will gleefully tag you in the photo. M$ wants in on that action so they can offer lookup services for photos of people. Do you want a SO or spouse to be able to pull up a photo history of you? Do you want a prospective employer to see a collection of photos of you through the years? Do you want your current employer to use those photos against you when you might be up for a promotion and decide your past may come back to haunt them should you be given a senior role?
My oldest sister is an FB Luser so I've long since avoided her when she has a camera in her hand. She put a photo with me in it on her FB account some years ago and I had to be rather harsh to get her to take it down. It was a really shit photo of me to start with. More importantly, I didn't want images of me uploaded to FB or any social media for privacy reasons.
