[bochen777]

So recently Protonmail published a blog strongly urging all its users to delete TikTok app because of alleged privacy and security reasons. Yet Protonmail company also runs a VPN (ProtoVPN) that itself was exposed as having 'accidentally' shared signing keys with another VPN company... and merely a few days later when asked if Protonmail would commit to being objectively nuetral in its stances/principle when protecting the internet/communication freedoms of users of TikTok/WeChat when/if the US administration bans theses apps, Protonmail went silence and not a word was uttered... yet they are at the same time giving donations to Hong Kong "freedom", writing blog posts in support of Hong Kong internet circumvention of the Chinese National Security Law, but when pressed if the situation was ever reversed would Proton/VPN take the same stance in protecting the internet freedoms of users of WeChat/TikTok against the bans of the US government, Protonmail not only went silent, it turned around a few days later and publicly posted that its position was that it strongly urged all its users to immediately delete and stop using TikTok! The hypocrisy and double standards could not be more clear, and many of Protonmail's pressers read much like that of what the CIA would post..

https://protonmail.com/blog/tiktok-privacy/
https://www.reddit.com/r/ProtonMail/com ... &ref=share

Is Protonmail secretly a CIA honeypot or CIA front? You decide...
https://privacy-watchdog.io/truth-about-protonmail/

[Outcast_Searcher]

It's good that you never fall for the conspiracy memes.

What's next? That the world is flat due to some CIA conspiracy?

[bochen777]

https://privacy-watchdog.io/protonmails ... h-cia-nsa/

[asg70]

Someone please delete this thread.

[dissident]

Someone please delete this thread.

Why? Because you hate the truth when it does not go your way.

All the US bitching about Huawei backdoors are a total joke since the US itself uses backdoors everywhere it can get its grubby fingers into.

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-germ ... AD20150709

As usual we have US and fellow traveler propaganda never proving its claims. If Huawei has compromised firmware and actual hardware spying features, then show it. So far, as with the Russiagate hoax, it is all "trust us" we "only speak the truth". Keep lapping it up.

[DesuMaiden]

Anyone here thought of using Linux? Yeah, that might be a good way to avoid the backdoors on Windows OS.

[Outcast_Searcher]

Anyone here thought of using Linux? Yeah, that might be a good way to avoid the backdoors on Windows OS.

I've been playing around with Linux Mint since late 2019, due to Windows 7 going off of support, and me not liking things about Windows 10, including not being able to opt out of any fixes which could break things.

Linux Mint is supported and is supposed to be a relatively easy transition re look and feel for Windows users. I don't know about any legit Windows back doors, but I DO have a big problem with the MESS that is Windows security, which seems to be MUCH MUCH worse than Linux.

There are various issues with Linux like things can be a pain to install and the documentation can be kind of random. Like trying to install Java Runtime on Linux took multiple tries because of so many poorly written instructions on various websites. OTOH, with Windows, it just seems to work.

Also some things aren't supported real well, so I'll be running various OS's for various purposes.

Still not seeing much on what happens when Windows 10 goes out of support for fixes (planned for 10/25), I SUSPECT Microsoft is going to FORCE all Windows 10 users into a "SaaS" (pay us EVERY MONTH, or lose your license/support) model, and ramp up the monthly rates until they become extortionate. Thus I want to have options. I'm hoping Microsoft is reasonable on that front, but not counting on that when the time comes.

As I understand things (and I'm no expert), Apple IOS, Android, and Chrome OS are just really Linux variants. with corporate wrappers (which of course, corporations will maximize their profits on, over time). But that means that for PC's, it's really just Windows and Linux as the major OS choices.

For those fanatical about backing up their entire hard drive (as I am), Windows has lots of disk cloners and tools with good reputations, many of which have free versions. I use Minitool Partition Wizard, which I strongly recommend for Windows XP, 7, and 10 as a good hard drive cloner and partition backup / manipulator, and there is a free version.

For Linux, with not too many tools and many of the tools not being commercial and thus relatively poorly documented, that's what I find the challenge. I need to play around and test out some backup utility for it. They exist, but it's NOT user friendly unless you buy an expensive tool.

I hope this helps. Again, I'm no expert, just a guy who doesn't mind fiddling around a bit and figuring things out, who has a fair amount of experience with Windows since V3.0 in 1990.

[Ayoob]

If you use solid state hard drives it's hard to lose data so readily.

I've bounced to Mint as well and it works great for me, almost everything I want to do can be done with Mint out of the box. Except games. Then WINE might come in handy later, but more likely I'll just exit the windows world and just be a linux wizard.

[Outcast_Searcher]

If you use solid state hard drives it's hard to lose data so readily.

With respect, re using an SSD, they are improving, and there are far more "crashes" that involve the drive becoming read-only, vs. unusable, vs. HDD's. However, given the importance of one's primary drive (for anyone doing lots of stuff and keeping lots of key data on their primary business/investment/life management PC), to me it's just CRAZY to assume the primary drive can't or won't go "poof" just because it now has no moving parts.

I speak as a "data fanatic" who started with paper tape with a data density of about 8 bytes per inch, went to punch cards, to floppies (many different formats, including 8 inches square that preceded the 5.25 inch standard), and on through hard drives, removable cartridges, tapes, flash drives, and now a variety of SSD's.

I'll state for the record, I've lost a MEANINGFUL amount of data on EVERY SINGLE FORMAT. In the 70's, it was things like mud puddles. In the 80's and 90's, it was devices suddenly failing completely without warning. And then having problems with backups. (Media was EXPENSIVE back then). Now you have a whole host of dangerous software like viruses, trojan horses, etc, which can get very ugly re one's data).

Obviously people are going to do what they want. But I'm not going to abandon having multiple copies of my data (away from my computer) unless/until I just have no choice. It's just too painful to face all the effort to rebuild all that from scratch, or risk losing it all. Oh, and with USB 3.0 or above, even a terabyte drive can be backed up fairly quickly. The speeds on the newer tech. just blow me away.

And now, it's AMAZINGLY cheap for data storage. My favorite journeyman SSD for my casual computers for old games, etc. is a 240 GB medium speed Kingston. It costs $35 now on Amazon. I had bought a bunch of them under $30 in recent years.(Maybe the chip shortage is pressuring prices? I don't know). Maybe it's perspective, but I bought a 200 MB HDD for like $700 in the late 80's, and was glad to have it. Now, a $25 to $35 roughly quarter gig SSD feels like buying a great house for $10K or something.

[Outcast_Searcher]

Speaking of backing up drives, one thing I'm clueless about and have seen different opinions on the net:

Can an SSD sit unused (say in a external 2.5" drive enclosure) for years, without risk of failure (catastrophic loss of data) at some point re not being hooked up to power "too long"?

I've never had that problem with flash drives, but I've read of that being a risk for SSD's.

At this point I use both cheap HDD's and SSD's to try to prevent such an eventuality, in case I forget to plug in all the SSD's to a USB port and run them a bit so they get power, now and then.

This could have been urban legend. Or it could have been only a thing with much older SSD's. I just don't know as I'm not at all a hardware guy, except for replacing / upgrading simple things like drives and memory, etc.

If anyone has insight into this with credible reference(s), many thanks in advance.