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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.
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…
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.
I made a similar point in one of My blog articles
I like your writing style. Nailed it.
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.
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.
Same thing with email. It’s all well and good if you’re using ProtonMail or Tuta or Posteo, but you’re still cooked if the other side is using Gmail.
Old problems, new modi operandi.
You can send self destructing messages with Protonmail
Do Proton remotely erase the message on the recipient’s email server? Even if it’s not a protonmail server?
Afaik, with proton you can send messages that won’t open through gmail if you protect them with a password. The other person receives a message with a link to open the mail in a browser after entering the password. It’s not the easiest solution but if you want to avoid gmail from knowing the contents of a message, you can do that.
But windows recall scrapes your screen, so even that wouldn’t work.
“But they are stored locally! Certainly, Microsoft won’t have access to those, right? Right???”
True
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.
GDPR has much the same problem: it can only actually be enforced against entities with a presence in Europe. When Europeans do international business, the GDPR only protects them if that foreign site has a business presence within Europe. When they have no bank accounts or business assets inside the EU, they are not subject to the GDPR.
Even though the GDPR covers your side, it doesn’t always cover the other side.
That’s why I said “regulations like the GDPR”. The US and other blocs need similar regulations. Especially the US is important, as they’ve shown that they’re willing to stretch the size of their jurisdiction to sometimes absurd lengths.
That’s usually a bad thing, but in this case that might be good.
“does your medical clinic do”
Bring back grammar nazis
This is common in British English.
For example, the question “Are you going into town?” might be answered by an American with, “I might,” and by a Brit with “I might do”. In past tense it would be “I might have” vs. “I might have done”.
This is all perfectly systematic and grammatical - this person just has a different grammar than you do. Though I guess that’s what Nazis do best: enforcing arbitrary standards in systems they don’t understand to destroy diversity to everyone’s detriment.
Wow that’s standard? It was the most awkward thing I’ve read all day. I feel bad for you guys out there…
Do you mean us guys where the language originated?
Not a native speaker here, what would be correct?
Assuming you’re asking about American English. Here is the revised scenario.
“I use Linux”
“Does your medical clinic?”
In this example the response is in a new sentence. So one should also include the subject in the new sentence.
“Does your medical clinic also use Linux?”
This is common and considered correct in British English.
“Does your medical clinic use Linux?” or just “Does your medical clinic?”
“Do you do” is redundant. Of course you do do if you do. You just do.
How do you?
Howdy
That was not the question though.
They might not be native English speakers.
Clearly this post was written by Tim Robinson.
Best I can do is actual Nazis.
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.
Legislature. GDPR was a good step.
Yes well my government is about to be run by a bunch of techno-nazi’s so that’s a non starter.
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
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 work for a healthcare company and when we launched we made a huge deal about only using Linux on our backend and only giving Macs to employees. It’s been almost 10 years and we’ve hired a small army of morons since then and they fired our CTO. These idiots have demanded windows so they can “do analytics” despite all our analytics being in looker and dbt and a bunch of fucking business bros in the csuite and vp level who demanded windows laptops because they just like it. They eventually canned our head of IT ans well and replaced him with a dumbass and that guy is currently trying to take MacBooks away from engineering. Then the head of “cloud engineering” just started outsourcing half our shit to consultants who keep building one off snowflake windows machines because nobody gives a shit anymore. So what used to be a clean ecosystem is now a giant botched pile of lowest effort garbage.
Stay away from this entire industry. There’s some brain rot where they only hire people with healthcare backgrounds even if the role has nothing to do with healthcare. What that turns into is people from ancient out of date orgs who have no idea what they are doing being hired over people from legitimate tech roles or any other background that is more advanced in other fields and the company will always slowly roll backwards into stupidity.
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’ve had the se thought as expressed in the last paragraph the other day and isn’t the anwser in compatibility layer? Like can’t they install and run windows medical software using WINE?
Having worked in healthcare IT. Adding more complexity will only make things harder for them. A lot of healthcare staff can barely operate the Windows PCs and applications they’re used to. Change anything and they act like the sky is falling.
That opens up a legal liability for the people creating the compatibility layer. You’ve gone from two points of failure (the doctor and the machine) to three.
For sure it can be done but most people / companies won’t want to take on that liability.
I think people who say “I don’t care, I use Linux” are really saying “You should use Linux to stop this.”
Yes. And whereas if you say “You should use linux” might get you downvoted and angry responsens, just saying “I use linux” does not.
But with enough repetition the people who care enough might eventually give Linux a try on their own time.Yeah but that misses the point.
Others SHOULD use Linux. We’ve been saying that for decades now and slooooowly people are learning. Stop down voting people for saying what everyone should be listening yo
I hate to be that guy, but they may not be aware of alternatives.
Im sure the receptionist in the doctors surgery cant wait to have that conversation.
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.
Maybe we should tell people to use Linux
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. 🙈
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.
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.
Just watching from Europe. I’m covered by strong and enforced privacy regulations.
Please do elaborate how they don’t work.
The US really needs to work on getting privacy rights in the constitution. There were some implied rights, but the current court’s busy rolling out back.
A well run, non-partisan campaign could fix this.
Sure, I’ll give it a shot:
Does Windows 11 meet European regulations?
Any answer other than “No” is a rebuttal against OP’s argument.
Yes, I run it at home. Clever enough, Microsoft has this handy little trick of asking you about your region during installation. And so it knows who it can screw over, and who not.
