Demand privacy

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.

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?

i use linux and don’t have family or friends or get any kind of medical care ☺️ checkmate

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.

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.

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.

I think people who say "I don't care, I use Linux" are really saying "You should use Linux to stop this."

"does your medical clinic do"

Bring back grammar nazis

No, you need to demand that government organizations use Linux or other open source systems as well, there is no other way.

You can require Microsoft to comply with rules, it won't. It doesn't care, it wants money, and more money, and that is it. It's been like that since it's inception. The same goes for all other tech companies

You know what brand doesn't careuch about money and will respect your privacy?

Open source software. Linux. Firefox (eh, mostly) with plugins, mariadb, etc...

I'm still pissed the email I had managed to keep junk free for years was leaked because my insurance company had a breach.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Maybe we should tell people to use Linux

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.

I made a similar point in one of My blog articles

https://medium.com/@viridiangrail/why-we-cant-just-protect-smart-people-from-data-tracking-c05d308e799f

I can control if I use Linux or not. I can't control my government being bribed lobbied by big tech that shits on consumer rights. I know what can reasonably change. Also the therapist and doctor offices are bad examples, because they have strong legal defenses through HIPAA.

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.

This is exactly the same argument we had with the loss of anonymity brought about by social media participation, primarily of Facebook. Now more and more of the digital space connects with the real world and other people end up giving out info about you. Then we had cameras and microphone put in every smart device and people bought those eagerly just so they could play with the equivalent of the latest dog face filter, putting them everywhere so you get spied on all over the place.

The average person is walking civilization into a nightmare and individuals who notice can do nothing about it. People will not let responsibility ruin their recess. They're children handing control of everything in their lives over to psychopaths who are re-enslaving all of us. Lemmings off a fucking cliff bought off with a series of damned toys.

That's why I demand (nag constantly) that everyone around me run Linux 🤣

Jk we're all doomed to live in an Orwellian dystopia

My wife and I just had this conversation a couple days ago where she pointed out that she has all the same documents as me on her computer and she uses Windows. I had to acknowledge that was definitely a hole in my privacy, so we concluded the conversation with the decision that she will start using Linux too. But you're right, the solution needs to be bigger.

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.

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.

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.

Dude, I can't even demand my health care insurance cover anesthesia for a procedure. Demanding anything from the government or a corporation is absolutely pointless at the moment.

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.

i just like linux, I am not cool or edgy using it but its a nice/fast os :(

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.

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.

Become ungovernable.

Permanently Deleted

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

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.

I don't care, I use Linux. 🙈

Demanding more regulation isn't going to solve this problem. Demanding that your therapist and family members abide by some sort of "regulation" just ensures that will only use software that is formally "certified" to meet the regulator's standards.

Microsoft has the lawyers and marketers to ensure that they can meet any regulation the government wants to throw at them.

Linux just solves it and distributes the solution, fast and free, to anyone who wants it. Nobody has time for regulators, so even though it is more broadly scrutinized and more secure than anything Microsoft will put out, it never gets "certified" by regulators.

You can best secure your privacy by pushing your therapist, your family away from Micoshit.