Answer is correct, I just want to clarify a bit more:

“Password protected” in your case probably just means that you have a bootloader password or a user account password. Both would not matter in this case. If you put your drive or partition anywhere else, and it’s not an encrypted partition, it can be read. Independently of user access rights. Any other OS accessing the same drive/partition can literally read everything if it’s not encrypted. Provided, of course, that there’s a file system driver available for the OS.

Windows by default doesn’t have any Linux filesystem driver installed. I’m not sure if that’s still the case when you install WSL. And there are 3rd party Linux filesystem drivers available as well.

But to protect yourself against robbery or a Windows which might in the future include a Linux filesystem driver, you should always encrypt all of your partitions. And when encrypting, use Bitlocker only for your Windows system partition, not for any data partitions, and certainly not for Linux partitions. For Linux partitons, use the integrated LUKS2. Bitlocker on Windows isn’t private encryption by the way, since a recovery key is being uploaded to MS’ servers automatically. That means MS has theoretical access, the US government has, and law enforcement has. As well as any hackers who manage to exfiltrate that key from somewhere. That’s why I’d use Bitlocker only for the C: partition, a 3rd party encryption tool like VeraCrypt for any other Windows partition, and LUKS2 for any Linux partiton.

Well every major tech product probably needs to have “AI” somewhere anywhere, otherwise you’ll probably have a problem of being too honest marketing disadvantage because there will be potential buyers who don’t understand anything about it but think “Thing with AI is better than Thing without AI”, period. Doesn’t even matter if there’s any AI involved anywhere or if the AI feature is actually useful. Unfortunately the tech industry is always heavily riding on hype trains and AI is the current one.

AFAIK, browser choice is still limited (as usual with Apple) because every browser on iOS needs to use Apple’s WebKit engine. That means they only differ in UI.

Of course they do. It’s to be expected that big tech companies use all data they can gather for training AIs, tracking users, creating psychological profiles of the users and selling data to the highest bidders.

Microsoft is also known for creating tools and products which track employees and workers and provide nice looking dashboards and statistics for the employers. And they partner up with Palantir and other companies to create even more effective surveillance solutions for companies and law enforcement to use eventually. MS is a data company since a couple of years, just like Google or Meta is. Data is very valuable.

In the case of Microsoft Office and Teams, there’s also the issue of corporate espionage. Companies from all over the world are freely giving away sensitive data about their documents, employees and projects to a US-based megacorp. There was a time in history when this would be called corporate espionage which is supposed to be bad and illegal and so on. But, since they’re all doing it voluntarily, and there’s no definite proof of MS doing anything because it’s a black box and no one except MS can inspect what they’re doing, it’s apparently “fine”. It’s like we have collectively become dangerously naive.

So yeah, it’s all “fine”. Until it isn’t. Until it is revealed one day. Then we can all be shocked and say “how could they do this, how could they violate our trust like that, their marketing slides looked so nice and the consultant was so charming and said we needn’t to worry about anything they would keep our data safe”. Well, if you trusted them in the first place, that’s your mistake. You cannot trust a company like MS, Meta, Google, TikTok, and so on with a huge track record of privacy violations. Ever. Cloud = someone else’s computer. Host your own stuff. Prefer not to use software with proven track records of privacy violations. Don’t use products or services from companies with such track records. Prefer open source over proprietary because when the code is openly auditable that’s a plus for trustworthiness, and proprietary applications usually have a bad track record of privacy violations and other anti-user features, while open source software rarely includes such things.

And it’s only going to get worse. With upcoming things like Recall, that’s almost like having a permanent camera behind you recording your screen at all times. I feel bad for all Windows users, but on the other hand, I don’t actually have to care. Keep trusting them blindly, but please don’t be surprised when it will come crashing down on you one day.

Yes.

If you still want to play such “modern” games loaded with what is akin to spyware, I recommend a dedicated only-for-gaming PC (running Linux of course*) using a different IP address than your main system (probably a notebook), for example by using a VPN on one but not the other. I’d recommend using the VPN for the gaming machine, it’s less of a risk there, it allows for easy circumvention of geo-blocking, etc. If you need to access some services (e.g. chat) from both machines, create a separate account for it. Don’t share account credentials between machines. In fact, act as if the gaming machine is permanently infected with random stuff “required” for modern games, and isolate it accordingly. This is just an idea how to mitigate those problems and don’t let them creep into to your real machine where non-game-related data could leak out as a result. But you’re still going to support the developer doing this which is not recommended.

*) Why still no Windows, in this isolated case, you ask? Well, because it’s important to fight MS’ monopoly on gaming machines, so don’t support it by running it and contributing to its marketshare. Instead, run Linux and enjoy watching Windows’ sinking market share. In fact, if you can, don’t support such games either by not playing them, that would be the ideal solution. But this is written under the presumption that you or your friends still want to play it and you kind of feel left out otherwise.

Yeah, you should use Linux regardless. ;-)

Well this whole area is mostly based on deceit. Like if they claim they MAY do something they will absolutely do it all the time, if they claim they aren’t getting anything from it, it just means they aren’t getting anything directly, but indirectly instead, or from a different involved party. I also like the message at the top of the page: “Under certain circumstances, you have rights under data protection laws in relation to your personal data.”. Under some circumstances you have rights. Which is weirdly accurate. Because in most circumstances, they will just sh*t on data protection rights. Which is also evident by everything being opt-out, rather than opt-in. And then, most likely, even when you disable everything, data will still flow somewhere. Then again, it’s an industry-wide problem. Not specific to Jagex.

While this does seem overly restrictive and out of place there, the result of this isn’t bad, because everyone should be at the most recent vesion at all times, period. If you aren’t, you’re exposed to more security holes and bugs. So it’s weird that that program forces you to do that, but it’s still not bad that you’re forced to do it. If you get what I mean. For some less-caring users who’d otherwise never install updates, forced updates are actually a net positive.

https://system76.com/laptops

https://www.tuxedocomputers.com/en/Linux-Hardware/Linux-Notebooks.tuxedo

I hope that our courts in western democracies are strong enough to stop these developments, but I fear they ara not. Once this kind of stuff is being attributed to (even completely unproven) “higher security” or “national security”, and once secret services run the software and identification routines, it will land in the same extra-legal space as internet mass surveillance already lives in: “No no, we’re not doing that. Okay, you got us, we’re doing it, but only in limited scope. Okay, you got us, we’re doing it on everyone, but it’s important for national security and we can’t disclose anything else”. And that’s usually when nothing can be done anymore about this, and laws and ethics will be outmaneuvered.

Remember that this is just one case in isolation. US-based data hoarders like Google, Meta, Microsoft, and so on are also regularly sued for various privacy law violations. And they all deserve it equally, TikTok included. I hope no one is left out. That said, unfortunately, the punishment is often a joke, which means these companies simply pay it out of their pocket change and then continue doing the exact same stuff. For example, France sued TikTok for something like 5 million $. Unless that number goes into the billions at least, I bet it’s still way more profitable for those companies to continue to absolutely sh*t on anything privacy related. So, in essence, nothing will change because of this. Not for US-based data privacy violators, not for Chinese-based. “Same shit, different country” has never been more fitting.

Yes. It’s basically about a ban or circumvention of E2EE, as usual. And as usual, this is not an option. Do not throw away your rights to strong, working encryption. Never.

deleted by creator