Thursday, December 31, 2015

In Case You Haven't Heard

Windows 10 covertly sends your disk-encryption keys to Microsoft
And that's not all. See the LINK.

4 comments:

John Rhue said...

Microsoft back-ported these "features" to Windows 8 and 7.

http://www.ghacks.net/2015/08/28/microsoft-intensifies-data-collection-on-windows-7-and-8-systems/

And Win Xp is no longer updated and has huge security holes in it.

Stan said...

We all need an option other than MS Windows. I'm not a computer nerd, so I'm not sure what's available, if anything. Any advice?

John Rhue said...

I'm a computer nerd so I get asked this.
There's really no non-computer-nerd answer.
Best practice would be to switch to Linux and use a VPN.

For Linux I recommend Ubuntu. Look for a LTS version. (Means "Long term support"). I've been installing this on privacy minded people's machines... and some of them even stick with it...

For web-browsering I recommend Firefox (or derivatives) with an ad-blocker like Ublock Origin or Adblock Pro.

Chrome sends data including everything you type back to Google so avoid. Internet Explorer is Microsoft so avoid.

VPN is an encrypted tunnel between your computer and another place. Someone wants to spy on you? With a VPN they would have to ask another country to do it which increases the difficulty. Has the side effect of slowing your internet and making it seem as if your web-traffic comes from elsewhere.

Xellos said...

If you want to learn a lot about how Linux works, though, I'd recommend Arch.

After non-trivial installation, you start with... nothing! Specifically, command line with a lot of basic utilities. One of the first questions is: how to set up Internet connection/s?

How to install? How to change various options (which files work as Control Panel)? How to obtain the standard GUI with windows and panels and everything? (It actually consists of multiple programs working together.) And so on.

There are a lot of walls to run into, but it's a great learning experience. And I haven't encountered a problem which wouldn't be solvable with Internet support.