One year after its radical launch, the Microsoft Windows Recall is still raising security red flags

Microsoft says its Recall program – which captures and saves screenshots every few seconds – is safe. Security researchers keep saying otherwise.

Recall was originally billed as a “graphic memory” for storing everything Windows users do on their computers. People may see some of those screenshots later by searching the AI ​​with clearly worded queries likered barn. (See the illustration above.)

Select members of the exclusive Microsoft Windows Insider program have had access to Recall for more than a year. Users of AI-powered Copilot+ PCs started getting Recall as a feature in April 2025, one year ago this month.

But since its inception, experts have shown time and time again that hackers can access Recall Stores. This raises questions about whether a device that records your entire digital life can be adequately protected. This situation creates uncertainty about Microsoft’s plans to make Recall widely available on all PCs.

Alexander Hagenah, the chief executive of SIX – a Zurich-based technology company that operates stock exchange infrastructure in Switzerland and Spain – described Recall’s security weaknesses in a LinkedIn post in April 2025. He also released an app he called TotalRecall that “can extract all the captured windows and photos taken by Recall … nothing is encrypted, no rocket science required.”

Joining other researchers, the University of Pennsylvania Office of Information Security issued a warning on April 14, 2025, about the version of Recall that was available at that time. The university’s announcement said the recall was “quiet.” large and unacceptable security, legal, and privacy challenges” [emphasis in the original]. The statement added that managers of “Windows locations in Penn highly recommended” to disable Recall.

In response to criticisms like this, Microsoft – to its credit – withdrew from its plans to issue a Recall for all Windows 11 PCs that met the highest system requirements (including a neural processing unit and eight logical processors, according to the MS Read document). Instead, the company announced in a blog update on June 13, 2024, that Recall will only be available to participants in the company’s much smaller Windows Insider program.

In the time since that decision, Recall’s fate has gotten worse. Journalist Zac Bowden wrote in a Windows Central blog post on Jan. 30, 2026, that Microsoft is “taking back Windows 11’s AI push with a major Copilot and Recall rethink.”

The problem is that it is difficult for software developers to make data very easy for end users to access while at the same time protecting it from hackers.

It’s hard to remember that the company’s original goal was ease of use, now that Microsoft has focused on making the security of its screen-cap system impenetrable.

Microsoft says that Recall blurs images of credit card numbers, bank passwords, and other personal data — or doesn’t save it at all. But security experts are still not convinced.

After testing the latest version of Recall, Swiss developer Hagenah has recently released a new proof of concept called “Total Recall” on its GitHub page. In his remarks, Hagenah said that any malware running on a user’s PC can copy all of Recall’s screenshots as they pass through the process memory: “No administrator required. Normal user. No kernel exploit.”

Hagenah has not publicly disclosed the other security holes, saying it has reported them to Microsoft and will not release technical details until the Redmond company has fixed the problems.

Already, malicious hackers have written code to exploit Recall screenshots. Malware can access Recall’s memory to copy screen caps and send them to a remote server. Hackers no longer need to write such code from scratch. (The process is described in a technical review by cybersecurity writer Kevin Beaumont.)

As of this writing, less than 10% Windows 11 PCs can enable and run the current version of Recall. Microsoft representatives answered my questions about the app’s future availability plans by pointing to the September 27, 2024, security update and the April 25, 2025 blog post.