Microsoft Adds Risky System-Wide Undelete to Vista

douder writes "Windows Vista will have a new 'previous versions' feature when it ships next year. According to Ars Technica, the feature is built off of the volume shadow copy technology from Windows XP and Windows Server 2003. Now turned on by default, the service stores the modified versions of a user's documents, even after they are deleted. They also report that you can browse folders from within Explorer to see snapshots of what they contained over time. It can be disabled, but this seems like a privacy concern." From the article: "Some users will find the feature objectionable because it could give the bossman a new way to check up on employees, or perhaps it could be exploited in some nefarious way by some nefarious person. Previous versions of Windows were still susceptible to undelete utilities, of course, but this new functionality makes browsing quite, quite simple. On the other hand, it should be noted that 'Previous Versions' does not store its data in the files themselves. That is, unlike Microsoft Office's 'track changes,' files protected with 'Previous Versions' will not carry their documentary history with them."

Comments

i dont get it...

[Anonymous Coward]

"could give the bossman a new way to check up on employees"

Um, your work computer is the property of your employer. If you want to do something that would get you in trouble with your boss - put it on your own computer. Plus all this does is back up files that you have made, how is this a privacy concern? Even if this was happening and you never knew it and uploading all your files to a central server, it's still an option of your employer, and not an invasion of privacy, it's crappy, but the option of your boss and his/her company. Just like the fact that they can read your business email. No different, and to me even less intrusive than that since you can't control incoming mail.

This is only a good thing

[HotNeedleOfInquiry]

Amazing that a Good Thing gets turned into a big-brother or privacy issue just because it's Microsoft. Shadow copy has saved my ass twice in the past year and the more it's available, the better. If employees are worried about the boss checking up on them, then maybe they should just do their job.

Keep in mind that the goal and justification of a desktop is productivity, not some vaguely defined "monitoring" issue.

Re:This is only a good thing

[fermion]

VMS lived in a different world. A world in which an elite controlled the computer in every respect, a world in which one often had to beg for an old tape to be put in so that one could access data. A world in which every bit data was not scrutinized by a forensic team with almost unlimited resources. A world in which data was not transmitted willy nilly to unknown parties. A world in which mysterious metadata hardly existed.

All the flavors of DOS in the 80's were way cool because it allowed us to control our own computer. In the 90's all went to hell as we became connected and the computer started doing more and more things no one really understood. A huge concern MS has not addressed is how to protect confidential information, and more importantly help companies not expose disruptive metadata. For instance, I do not believe they have a setting in outlook to scrub MS Office files as are mailed to external addresses. Nor have the implemented the DRM that would allow firms to track users violate border policy. MS adds features that makes systems less secure, without thought of how to compensate for the breech.

This is clearly an awesome feature. So was the command line shortcuts. But features do not exist in a vacuum. There is only so much that can be done to help careless users. If MS is to provide business class systems, and not just toys that can be used as business systems, they have to get serious about making systems that businesses need. I think that if MS would develop a core competency in business, and leave the consumer side to others, MS would be in much better shape. Imagine how wonderful Vista would be if it did not have to worry about they toys that home user need.

Just more overhead

[gasmonso]

As with System Restore, Windows Firewall, Remote Assistance, etc... just disable, delete and install better applications to provide the same functionality. MS should just focus on security, stability, and releasing the damn thing.

http://religiousfreaks.com/

Looks cool

[Sloppy]

I don't get the privacy concern. If someone gains physical access to your machine, then the contents are vulnerable unless you take active steps to prevent it. People have known forever that stuff may not be lost forever just because it's deleted. This feature doesn't change that.

The issue is that this makes it "easier" but I can't help but see that as a neat feature.

The really silly part is this:

Some users will find the feature objectionable because .. perhaps it could be exploited in some nefarious way by some nefarious person.

If that's what keeps you up at night, then you better give up on all technology, not just this.

Such a great idea

[xeos]

Yes, other people have thought of it before, but kudos to Microsoft for implementing it. Disks are cheap, whereas the documents I create are not. Anything which helps protect those documents from mistakes is going to be a good thing.

Same thing with NTFS

[Sycraft-fu]

It doesn't actually delete your data, just flag the space as free. The problem is that undeletion in that matter is unrelaible at best. A fiel is at any time subject to partial or complete overwrite, even if there's ample free space on the drive. When it's flagged as free the OS sees it as free period. There's no prioritisng the free space to not overwrite newley delete files (DOS was the same way).

This gives you more reliability. The files are stored and aren't messed with until the space is needed. So if you delete something and still have 500GB free, it'll keep the file since you can afford the space and it'll be marked as allocated and thus not overwritten. Also, it looks like it does version tracking too. If you overrote a file on a FAT or NTFS volume, it writes it to the same space it occupies before, makes sense to do it that way. However that means if you mess up and make a change you didn't want to, there's no undo. You replaced the bytes, it's too late. This will go and keep a copy prior to the change you can roll back to.

Basically it's similar to how NetApp units work. It provides storage that's reliable even against user faults. Things like RAID are great, but they protect only against hardware falure. You can still fuck your data up. There's a market, and MS seems to think the home desktop includes it, for systems that are resiliant against that. You decided to delete 5 paragraphs of that paper and save it, and then deleted it form the disk but now want it? Ok no problem, not only do we have the deleted version, we have the pre modificaiton version.

We use a NetApp FAS 270 at work for home directories for this reason. We aren't really concerned about disk reliability, though it's excellent for that too, and we go to tape nightly. We want to be able to save people from themselves. When they screw something up, we want to be able to get a non-screwed up copy.

MS wants to bring that to home computers. Will it be worth the performance impact? Guess that's too be seen. However it's certianly a good idea in general. What most users really need and want, even if they don't know it, is protection from their own mistakes.

More MS Headlines Gone Bad

[DavidD_CA]

For the benefit of future article submissions, I've predicted a few headlines from the coming future and offer the required Slashdot twist:

Windows 2010 Ships with IPv6 as Default
    - becomes -
Windows 2010 Foresakes Legacy IPs

Microsoft Office 2009 Ships with Photoshop Competitor
    - becomes -
Microsoft Cheats Adobe Out of Millions, Again

Microsoft Ergonomic Mouse Helps Corrects Carpal Syndrome
    - becomes -
Microsoft Mouse Locks Out Porn

Asheron's Call VII Goes Alpha
    - becomes -
700 Bugs Detected in Asheron's Call VII

Please add your own.

Because they have to care about mroe than you

[Sycraft-fu]

MS's job isn't to make you, the geek happy. MS's job is to make as many people as they can as happy as possible. So let's say they develop a new awesome feature that they think nromal users will really like. However, they know normal users aren't smart enough to turn it on by themselves (this is easy to prove). They have two choices:

1) Disable it by default. This makes a few geeks who know about it and want it happy, more geeks who know aobut it but don'want it indifferent, and doesn't help normal users at all. It's almost worth just leaving out.

2) Enable it by default. This makes some geeks who don't want it a bit annoyed, but makes everyone else happy.

Gee, hard choice. Look, if you want an OS that does nothing by default, get a different OS. Run OpenBSD or something. You won't spend any less time configuring it than you will configuring Windows, you'll just spend that time turning things on rather than off.

Really I fail to see the problem. If you only do it occasionally, it's just a few more minutes of system configuration. I do a hell of a lot of customization to personal systems, it doens't bother me the time I spend turning the things I don't want off. If you do it a lot, develop a system to automate it. There's plenty of ways including customized Windows installs. Don't whine because you haven't done the research to automate tasks for you.

Because MS is an everyman based OS, they need to have the useful stuff turned on by default because normal users won't do it. It's like automatic updates. I don't like them to install on my personal system automatically because I many have something going. So I set it to wait till I give the ok. However it needs to be on by default for normal users. Why? Well otherwise they won't update it. Just today I had to update an XP system that was pre SP2 still. Why? No auto updates. Users didn't know they needed anything, just thought it should take care of itself.

Same shit here. If you don't need file version tracking because you make your own backups, you are smart enough to know how ot turn it off. If you don't know how to turn it off, it's probably a feature you should leave on.

This is retarded.

[Wakko Warner]

"System-wide undelete", also known as filesystem snapshotting, has been available for years in various incarnations, both native to Linux (and other operating systems) and as part of NAS storage devices.

Why the hell is it suddenly bad when Microsoft does it? (Hint: it isn't.) What the hell are you doing on your PC at work that could get you fired if your boss found out?

FUD indeed.