this post was submitted on 02 Oct 2023
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Privacy

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A place to discuss privacy and freedom in the digital world.

Privacy has become a very important issue in modern society, with companies and governments constantly abusing their power, more and more people are waking up to the importance of digital privacy.

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[–] [email protected] 19 points 1 year ago (6 children)

what are people doing w there win PC and tor browser? u ain't secure/private if ur on windows....anyway...🀷 *Linux gang

[–] [email protected] 99 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Don’t let perfect be the enemy of good.

Windows might not be the ideal privacy solution, but it’s often not something that people can reasonably change.

It takes work to relearn an operating system. People’s work applications may not function outside of windows. Virtualization and emulation are not perfect.

[–] [email protected] 20 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Well said. I use Linux on my main desktop PC and Windows on the laptop. I'm the "use the tool that works for you when you need it" type of guy. Windows may not be as private or as secure as Linux, but it sure does have its use cases. And like you said, a lot of people may not have the luxury of changing their os. Linux is not always ideal. For instance, the laptop I have windows on never worked well with Linux. It has always had problems because it has that hybrid Intel/Nvidia graphics. And that shit is an absolute nightmare on Linux. It works flawlessly on windows.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Totally agree. I have to use Windows at work and I dual boot Windows and Linux on both my home desktop and laptop. Pop_Os! hybrid graphics have been working great on my laptop tho FYI might be worth checking out

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

I have tried pop os and loved it. I just didn't like the battery life on it (on Intel only). Animations were very laggy without running on Nvidia 100% which drains the battery even more. I get very smooth animations and great battery life on windows. I have endeavourOS on my desktop and it's amazing. Went all out AMD on the PC because fuck Nvidia.

[–] [email protected] 13 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I’m so glad yall found yet another β€œwindows bad Linux good” avenue.

[–] [email protected] 13 points 1 year ago (1 children)

This one's not really new. It's essentially the basis of the entire FSF manifesto and the purpose behind the GPL in the first place. If you don't have the source code to your tech, you have no real idea what's happening to your information while you use it.

Adding a TOR layer on top of a black box OS might provide some privacy for your network traffic, but the system calls being called by the browser are inherently untrustworthy to begin with.

Or, to sum up "Proprietary untrustworthy, open source more trustworthy," which still isn't as pithy as your quip.

[–] [email protected] -1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

there is little difference between "open source but you need formal education to be able to dig through and understand the documentation and code" and closed source. open source is still better for ethical reasons but for 9/10 users, it's not reasonable to check the source code and they are losing any potential "security" benefits that was provided.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 year ago (1 children)

You are correct for open source projects with only a few maintainers... But with a project as big as linux, there are SO many people with that "formal education" (which doesnt really even need to be formal) that the amount of eyes on the codebase DOES benefit the normies who dont look at it.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

I 100% agree, I just think it's dangerous rhetoric to push because you end up with normies that have been told "open source is more secure" and end up running any script they find on GitHub without having a clue how to audit what it's actually doing. (this was me 5/6 years ago until I figured out what I was doing).

this is the same reason I find people claiming that Linux is more secure than windows dangerous. I can exfiltrate data from the average Linux install much easier than windows. you can harden Linux to a much greater degree but if you don't know how or that you even need to, you are in a much worse position.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I disagree that you are inherently in a worse position simply because you dont know enough to take a peek at the code or harden things. I think that again, simply being such a massive project linux gives a trickle down effect to normal users. Even as a normie, you are safer on linux than on windows, full stop. As for github scripts, thats an entirely different subject because yes, open source CAN be dangerous still (just like proprietary can).

[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 year ago

what makes you suggest you are safer on Linux?

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 year ago

@free Yep, thats why people invest a lot of time which have much more technical understanding than you have to create products to improve the privacy problem on Windows, Privacy isn't a privilege which only a specific group of human is allowed to have, Privacy is a human right and should be accessable for everyone. If you miss the understanding for that, I would recommend informing yourself better then spreading false information.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Do u think correcting spelling like this helps cos u clearly understant what was meant.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

Grammar Nazis are about as helpful as those tiny biting gnats that never go away, even if you spray for them

I was hoping I wouldn't see so many here because I had my fill of them on r*ddit

[–] [email protected] -1 points 1 year ago

idk m8, wut r u doin w ur pc tho

[–] [email protected] 12 points 1 year ago

Microsoft: Cool, now we know what communities care about Tor on our OS. Time to pass this info onto the alphabet groups.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

Glad this got cleared up. Surprised there wasn't a louder more public notice from the Tor group. Despite what people want, windows is a major platform with many tor users.