Smug Reddit-level takes left and right in this thread. The kid successfully hacked a website, you can assume he knows what he’s doing better than you and followed all the best practices short of not using Windows. They didn’t get his account from his Edge credential store. He probably used some Firefox-derivative. Tor browser if he was stupid. He probably “hardened” Windows every way he could think of, again, short of disconnecting from the internet. Windows simply does a good job of spying on you, that’s all it is.
There are even people in the thread recommending running Windows games on Linux as a way to avoid this surveillance. If you put Microsoft Flight Sim on your Linux computer, then that’s now a Windows computer. Microsoft owns that computer, same as the Windows one. If you install Nvidia drivers, Nvidia owns that computer, and the USA can ask Nvidia for your accounts and whereabouts instead of Microsoft. If you put Steam on your Linux computer, that’s now Steam’s computer and the USA can ask Steam.
The security of Tor is built on the assumption that one actor owning a majority of the nodes is improbable to the point of being written off as a non-concern. The tool has always been run and maintained by the USA government. When they opened access to the public, they owned the majority of the nodes, and with the amount of compute available to the NSA (look up the size of their official data-centres, add in their hacked bot-farms), it’s almost certain they still do. If it wasn’t their plan to always have supremacy, they aren’t doing their job. The purpose of Tor is to hide traffic from USA’s enemies. A few tens of thousands of private users is just reducing their power bill and painting targets on their own backs, not successfully hiding from the NSA.
Smug Reddit-level takes left and right in this thread. The kid successfully hacked a website, you can assume he knows what he’s doing better than you and followed all the best practices short of not using Windows. They didn’t get his account from his Edge credential store. He probably used some Firefox-derivative. Tor browser if he was stupid. He probably “hardened” Windows every way he could think of, again, short of disconnecting from the internet. Windows simply does a good job of spying on you, that’s all it is.
There are even people in the thread recommending running Windows games on Linux as a way to avoid this surveillance. If you put Microsoft Flight Sim on your Linux computer, then that’s now a Windows computer. Microsoft owns that computer, same as the Windows one. If you install Nvidia drivers, Nvidia owns that computer, and the USA can ask Nvidia for your accounts and whereabouts instead of Microsoft. If you put Steam on your Linux computer, that’s now Steam’s computer and the USA can ask Steam.
There is no “safe” amount of malware.
Why tor if he was stupid? I am stupid.
The security of Tor is built on the assumption that one actor owning a majority of the nodes is improbable to the point of being written off as a non-concern. The tool has always been run and maintained by the USA government. When they opened access to the public, they owned the majority of the nodes, and with the amount of compute available to the NSA (look up the size of their official data-centres, add in their hacked bot-farms), it’s almost certain they still do. If it wasn’t their plan to always have supremacy, they aren’t doing their job. The purpose of Tor is to hide traffic from USA’s enemies. A few tens of thousands of private users is just reducing their power bill and painting targets on their own backs, not successfully hiding from the NSA.
I appreciate the explanation. If not Tor, for very obvious reasons you specified, what is the better alternative?
deleted by creator