I've enjoyed reading this board for the last few years as it really helped me maintain my Windows 7. I no longer have W7, but I do maintain my dad's PC with W7 on it...so I keep reading here looking for W7 security tips for the long haul. I understand some hate W10 or some hate W7, but there's no need to insult the users of any Operating System. Let's get this back on track and limit insults to OS and not aimed at people who use them. I hate to see this board turn into a free for all, as many, many people are still using Windows 7 and will need the boards help in the future.
Absolutely agreed. The reason I'm sticking around here for awhile aside from just making one throwaway post is because I actually got help for my issues rather than immediate dismissal for not wanting to put my new machine on 10. I mean, you guys have TenForums for a reason. I say keep the "upgrade" evangelizing over there.
Now it's true that you'll need to update since it will be very hard to find a motherboard and CPU or even a new laptop that will support 7. Plus the software compatibility will be going away in at least 15 years time with 7 and the browser. I plan on using a very nerdy approach to 10 with a nettop running Pfsense blocking outboud M$ ASNs and monitoring my network with a plunder bug for stuff that shouldn't be there. If I'm not seeing multicast, Spotify, Protonmail bridge, etc traffic emanating from MY PC then I'm going to investigate that IP and may block it or ASN in Pfsense. If I need an update I'll fire up the VPN and bypass the firewall. That's not to say I'll also run Shutup10 or one of its variants.
So you really have two options going forward. Use Linux (check out Qubes) or nerd out your computer like I will to use a damn OS so you can still game.
This is why I just built new a machine with modern hardware over the holidays. Hardware, particularly mobos/processors, is rapidly ending support for 7 as we speak (the mobo I bought advertised itself as supporting 7 but it's clear to me that the OEM barely tested it with 7 at all, and didn't even bother trying with some pieces of it, particularly the wifi card which is explicitly 10-only).
My advice to anyone with the financial agency to do so and aging hardware: if you're going to get a new machine, do it now. I already had to jump through enough hoops with the USB compatibility to get 7 Pro running, and presumably it's only going to get harder over the next few years. But now that I have it more or less working, I can look forward to at least a few more years of 7 before software compatibility issues force me to go Linux.
I guess it's lucky I don't do much serious gaming, at least on PC.
Did you know whether you use Facebook or not many Apps communicate to Facebook? Unreal.
Good rule of thumb here is always, always check app permissions and install the one with the fewest permissions possible for what you're trying to do. If you just want, say, a sound recorder, exactly why does that need full network access? Answer: it doesn't. It needs the mic (obviously), and filesystem access to store the recordings. That's it.
Some apps are obviously going to need more than that since they do more complex things, but then you have to ask yourself how important that app really is vis-a-vis the risk you're taking.
To those that think we should all just comply with what amounts to is a major privacy invasion, I ask you. Will you allow the microchip implant from /\/\otorola, Android, Qualcomm, etc one day? Will you be alright with cameras all over your house feeding back to some cloud even in the bathroom on the basis of "security?" Wait till your toilet analyses your crap with DNA for health reasons and that data being sent back to your doctor. Google already bought Fitbit.
I remember many decades ago there was unique identifier in CPUs and there was such an outcry it was removed. Now it seems no one cares about their privacy or their own PC (Personal Computer). What's good for the goose is good for the gander is the common trait of the human drone now a days.
I mean, in fairness to Kari's crowd, this kind of thing can become a slippery slope argument if we aren't careful (not that there hasn't been abundant evidence for such a slope already, but it's still not a good look). I think a more accurate, if possibly depressing, take is that customers in general aren't "voting with their wallets" as much as they used to, primarily because companies like MS have been getting so big in the last couple decades that there's a widespread perception that it's pointless to try and resist them (see also: Amazon). So the result is these companies can shift their priorities to things that have an at-best tenuous relationship to what would actually benefit their customers.
I mean,
data collection for marketing in a product you ostensibly already bought and paid for. That's the kind of thing a company pulls when they have little to no need to even
try and dress it up as being beneficial for the customer.
True of people who have one, but some of us carry a flip-phone.
Dang, that's hardcore. I was a non-smartphone holdout myself until around 2014, mostly because my thing is physical keyboards though. My current phone is a Blackberry KeyOne and I love the hell out of it (just, as I said before, I consider it an inherently non-private platform and curate the data I put on it accordingly). Not sure what I'll do when it dies. I've been keeping an eye on this one for awhile but I'm getting concerned that it's been "shipping in 4-6 weeks" for several months now.
F(x)tec PRO1 | F(x)tec
I tried it a few years back and didn't like it at all. We have a Mac in the house, which I will use for bill paying, whatnot. But or basic internet usage (Firefox) and files access, I will keep my W7 going.
