Don't forget with the Recall feature, you may be on Linux and are using a secure communication application, but if who you are talking to is on windows your conversation can be scraped.
It's not like companies that use Linux don't get breached either. Your personal data is in thousands of databases that have varying levels of security. Personal choices don't affect any of that, regulations like GDPR are what's needed.
getting breached is different from using spyware.
this goes for pretty much every single chat app out there. most of the popular ones are proprietary and go through private servers.
privacy is important kids.
So it's not enough to brag about being on Linux ourselves, we should be encouraging our friends to switch to Linux as well?
How's this different from someone just record your call? The thing you are worrying about has been possible long before Recall is a thing.
But does your medical clinic do?
No, they don't, and it pisses me off. Every time I see it, I think, Well, there goes my medical privacy.
But where else can I go? There's only one health company in town, and they bought all the doctor's offices.
Who can I complain to? The doctors and nurses are visibly frustrated with Windows every time I see them use it. If they can't change it, how could I?
That ship has sailed anyway. I've had no less than 5 breach notifications show up in the mail from things related to my health care in the last 2 years, and it's not like I'm constantly at the doctor. The whole system is a disaster.
They might not know there are alternatives. So they likely do not ccomplain to their IT person.
Dont be a "jUsT uSe LiNuX" guy, but when you see them frustrated maybe say "hey I see you are frustrated as well and I as a patient are concerned about my medical data privacy. You know there are better and safer alternatives, maybe you could ask your IT if it would be possible to switch to Linux?"
Realistically, they can't switch because the software to use some $€1m medical device only runs on windows.
I sell encryption. Send me the lead dog ;p
I work in IT for healthcare, and our CTO, CIO, and head of Cybersecurity are all ex-Microsoft. We're a "Windows Shop" adopting anything Microsoft has ever made, from Windows to Azure DevOps to Access
i use linux and don’t have family or friends or get any kind of medical care ☺️ checkmate
Using Linux in America be like
The failures of the United States healthcare system are compatible with the Unix philosophy due to its emphasis on doing one thing poorly and leaving the rest for the user to figure out. Like Unix tools, each component—insurance, billing, and treatment—functions independently, refusing to communicate effectively while relying on the user to “pipe” themselves between endless calls, paperwork, and escalating bills. Debugging your health, much like debugging code, requires advanced knowledge, infinite patience, and a willingness to accept that nothing will ever be fully resolved.
And most servers do too.
God save ASP and .NET applications
privacy is scary stuff if you think. it's like, i care so i dont share my phone number with facebook, but someone out there may have my number/address/name on their contact list and chances are big that they have no problem sharing with zuck. so i'll still end up on zuck's database.
I just activated my checking account with PayPal and one of the questions from the verification battery was asking me which email I recognized. They were different domains of my mother's ISP email that she uses only with Amazon.
I had the urge to answer incorrectly as if that would remove their association.
My dad did that. The man has a slight obsession with collecting information about our entire extended family, as far back as he can go in time. He's been known to get in touch with small municipalities to ask for their records about someone 8 generations back. He's collated quite a bit of data over the years.
And then one day he went and loaded all of that into a shitty mobile family tree app. Phone numbers, current addresses, email addresses, photos, a shit ton of personal information of a shit ton of people, uploaded to some random developer's unknown database without their consent. He didn't even pause to think about it for one second. I told him what he did, he wasn't even bothered.
There are tons of people like my dad who don't have a single cell in their entire bodies that gives a flying fuck about data privacy, unfortunately, and they give out everyone's data along with their own.
Demand it from who? With what power or leverage?
Not to be defeatist, but I'm just a guy. Nobody's gonna listen to my demands. I'm surprised privacy notifications say anything other than "You don't have any" with two buttons that both say "OK". All I can do is selfhost as much as possible and decline to use tons of applications or services that underpin modern societal functions or social activities. So I do. But it sucks ass and I don't have any power to change any of it.
Where I am, unlike climate change, the privacy issue is not discussed properly so just explaining it to people that trust you can boost any future systemic action.
No, but the point they're trying to make is, I think, that the more you complain, the more other people complain and the more other people start complaining and unless we have enough complainers and people switching, nothing is gonna change.
Our power is imperceptible but not non-existent
Wow that last line is exactly what I needed to hear, thank you
What drives me nuts about this subject is rarely spoken about.
No single company can properly compensate all of their users for the damages caused by mishandling their personal data.
In fact the damages may even be too great for the government to properly compensate said users.
My government forces a fingerprint on our id cards. I already lost. I can't use my fingerprint anywhere for authentication because it's not mine anymore.
All your fingers, or just one?
No single company can properly compensate all of their users for the damages caused by mishandling their personal data.
What do you mean? Every time I've been involved in a data leak, I got offered 6 months of identity monitoring. What more could you want?
I'm still pissed the email I had managed to keep junk free for years was leaked because my insurance company had a breach.
Simplelogin/anonaddy
That having been said, keeping an email "private" is roughly as silly as people who think phone numbers are private, as if the white pages never existed.
I think there's some confusion at play here. That argument is about security, not privacy.
Is the concern that Microsoft is ingesting your data and thus your actions aren't private? Or is it that Windows is not secure and so you don't think data stored in Windows systems is safe from third party access? That distinction matters, because in both cases the way it's framed here isn't really accurate but for different reasons.
And both arguments are valid. However, when discussing privacy with somebody "who has nothing to hide", the security concerns argument usually holds more ground.
"Fine, you don't mind microsoft and their 961 partners to know about your computer usage patterns. But how about the criminals which will have your data as well? You may trust microsoft with your data - "because they have it already" - but do you trust each of these 961 partners? Do you trust all their privacy policies? I have read some. They are horrendus and allow sharing with third parties. Do you trust their privacy and security?"
Well, for one, I have no information regarding MS keeping mandatory telemetry of Windows application usage or data (at least outside their own software suite). As far as I know what is there is opt-in and does not extend to keeping any copies of your computer data, which is the point where you'd be worried about something like your medical records. One of the reasons the Recall nonsense drew so much attention is that it was an unusual instance of something approximating that.
But the other side of your argument is a bit confusing, because it seems to be coming from the angle of... proselytism, I suppose? As in, what is more useful to convince somebody who doesn't care about the privacy side that they should avoid Windows.
And to be clear, that's not my goal, or at least not a goal I think is worthwhile in absolute or abstract terms, for its own sake. I'm not an OS activist, use whatever the hell you want and works for you. The closest I have is a distaste for Apple's pricing and ecosystem-focused tactics but, man, that 600 bucks M4 Mac Mini is nice value, I'll think about it.
On the merits of the argument, I'm not sure it tracks, either. If someone attacks a legitimate holder of your data the part I care about is how secure their data storage is (because, again, nobody is sharing your medical records over Microsoft telemetry gathering, that's not a real thing).
I trust a third party's security setup as far as I can throw it, I don't care if it's on Azure, Google, Amazon or a self-hosted Linux server. Hell, I may trust the self-hosted Linux server of a provider least of all of those. Not because of Linux, but because of the self-hosting.
As a home user the OS thing is preference, some prefer Windows, some Mac, some Linux, etc.
Your post however raises a good point, and it certainly makes me form an opinion in a greater context. Thanks for making me think about this, genuinely - it's good to have opinions challenged.
Thanks for making me think about this, genuinely - it's good to have opinions challenged.
Not me. I plan to continue being a sweaty holier-than-thou neck beard and mock people using Windows. Brb gotta write to my dentist about how good Linux is now and recommending Arch to my general doctor who still uses a computer from 2010.
Until there is serious consequences to data breaches and criminal charges it doesn't matter. It's been a free for all for a long time the best we can do is simply keep using products or services that respect your privacy and discourage or not use services.
Yeah, our response to the Equifax breach was the end of data privacy. Oh, you lost literally all of the data for all of the adults in the US that you have been tracking without consent? All good, don't worry.
Really, the response should have been the FBI taking all of their equipment, figuring out exactly what was stolen, notifying all the victims, then formatting and shredding all the equipment and sending Equifax a bill, on top of a huge fine.
Does your company/school provide employee/student Microsoft 365 licences? Ask your Windows-using colleague to check that "Optional Connected Experiences" are enabled and tell the IT team that they are likely allowing genAI training on internal documents (Microsoft seems to have reserved the right to do that and never denied the allegations). Yes, they can disable this organization-wide and will likely contact Microsoft over this, and if enough of us do this they'll know they crossed a line.
If your company's IT team does not respond, you'll have another argument getting your peers over to LibreOffice.
But does your medical clinic do? Does your therapist do?
This person's grammar would probably be greatly improved if they used Linux.
Edit: ouch, tough room.
They could have just said
[ -n $THERAPIST ]but they had to go and conjugate verbs poorly.
Maybe we should tell people to use Linux
I made a similar point in one of My blog articles
I like your writing style. Nailed it.
This is unrelated to the article you're sharing now, but I read that (I agree thoroughly that the GDPR needs to be a start, but that it's inconsistently followed/enforced) and then I saw and read your article about apathetic cis people who might be agender. That's a neat perspective that I hadn't considered before — I'm cis and very much not apathetic about my gender (and I sometimes experience dysphoria if I am not treated as my gender). However, I have a bunch of other friends who have described their attachment to their gender as being far more "meh", and I am looking forward to getting a chance to discuss your article with them.
It strikes me that most of my friends are some flavour of LGBTQIA+, but I don't know anyone who is agender. However, 10 years ago, many of my friends who now are non-binary didn't know a term for their experience of gender, so identified as the closest they could find (such as lesbian). I wonder how many people I know who might find that "agender" feels like a fitting identity, if it were more prevalent in discourse etc.
Thank you
This is framed with OSs in mind but the place where this actually happens the most is mobile apps.
It's difficult to protect your contact info when everyone with you in their contracts gives access to candy crush. It's the one I see the most and know who does it because those people will show up in the "you might know this person" shit.
It’s always the games or some other Chinese crApp
Despite strenuous efforts, I still get ads using my private information (like I told my friend in person I needed a charger for a specific brand of vacuum [I needed the charger for a piece of random equipment but found that a Dyson cable worked and wouldn’t be $100] and next thing you know I’m getting ads for Dyson and vacuums in general).
Pretty sure we all know that. I've been using Linux full time for about 8 years now. I'm also EXTREMELY aware that I can't change what OS an organization runs. It's a systemic problem.
That's why I demand (nag constantly) that everyone around me run Linux 🤣
Jk we're all doomed to live in an Orwellian dystopia
(me screaming at the gas station attendant from behind the bulletproof glass)
BRO CHANGE YOUR OS!
If Linux became the most used OS on the planet, wouldn't more people be interested in finding vulnerabilities to exploit in it? People used to claim Mac didn't get viruses. But it wasn't because it was impervious; it was because it wasn't widespread enough to be worthwhile to make anything for it.
Linux is not the most used but it is used in some of the most important places. An exploit on Linux is still very useful, while there are very few Apple servers still running.
But does your medical clinic do? Does your therapist do? Does your family member...
Surprisingly, yes. Though they're not happy with it, for various reasons. But it was refreshing to rant to my therapist about snap, apt and systemd and have them truly understand me.
got 'Hogwarts Legacy' for $17 on a sale ($60 normally) and after starting it up I got put on a shader caching screen for literally 10 minutes It instantly put me on a screen that forced me to go to some 3rd party website to enter my email and IRL location for them to delete my data if they had it, BUT IT DIDN'T EVEN WORK. It showed an error message!!
Then it gave me literally 15 customizeable items I don't care about then after literally 20 minutes of playtime IT CRASHED.
… what?
Karma, I'd say
On a side note, I don't discuss anything with gmail users that I don't want indexed and stored in Google's dossier of me.
I don't care, I use Linux. 🙈
When you're the person the meme is talking about and proud of it.
Right. I'm not saying I'm proud of it... Just that I'm here and I took notice. Thx for making the meme. I think there is more to the story... But at the same time it also nails it.
Using Linux does not make you safe either. Given that almost every server runs Linux, you can bet good money that most intelligence agencies have a few full time employees adding backdoors to the kernel XZ Utils style, and at least one of them has succeeded.
i just like linux, I am not cool or edgy using it but its a nice/fast os :(
Good luck with that
I hate to say this, but PRIVACY IS DEAD... Atleast online... Unless, you are an IT expert and been using VPNs since 2001.
it died a long time ago
Valid. I also don't have the "I don't care" stance but rather that medical providers etc should go to jail for storing data on unsecure infrastructure
