[Novalug] Linux on a chromebook - secure?

Rich Kulawiec rsk@gsp.org
Thu Jan 22 08:34:50 EST 2015


On Wed, Jan 21, 2015 at 05:39:55PM -0500, Roger W. Broseus via Novalug wrote:
> Question is will Google be tracking me everywhere if I install, e.g.,
> Ubuntu.

I've been steadily excising Ubuntu from every computing environment that
I touch, not just because of Canonical's braindead and tonedeaf technical
decisions, but because they decided to crawl into bed with the spammers
at Marketo:

	Privacy policy | Terms and policies
	http://www.ubuntu.com/legal/terms-and-policies/privacy-policy

and because they decided to embed spyware in the operating system:

	Richard Stallman calls Ubuntu "spyware" because it tracks searches
	http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2012/12/richard-stallman-calls-ubuntu-spyware-because-it-tracks-searches/

(Before someone points out that you can supposedly turn this off: it
doesn't matter.  Responsible, ethical software professionals would
never have built such a mechanism in the first place, since it's
clearly ripe for privacy abuse and security exploitation.  I call this
"pre-compromised at the factory": Canonical has done potential attackers
the enormous favor of building a highly usable mechanism for them at no cost,
thus considerably lowering the effort required on their part.  It's the
software equivalent of Chekhov's apocryphal rifle.)

Thus I recommend finding an alternate distribution.  One that I've tried
and found reasonable is Linux Mint Debian Edition.  LMDE does *not* rely on
Ubuntu, it comes in 32- or 64-bit versions, and it comes with either the
MATE or Cinnamon UI's.  It performs reasonably well on smaller/slower
hardware and seems to be adequately maintained: the set of observed
updates matches up well with the set of expected updates (from upstream
projects) and they show up in a reasonably timely manner.  You can find
it here:

	Download - Linux Mint
	http://www.linuxmint.com/download_lmde.php

Since it's a live DVD (or if you wish, live USB), you can try it out
easily and discard it if you don't feel it appropriate for your needs.

There are many other choices, of course.

As to attempting to remain quasi-anonymous online, that's difficult
no matter which distribution you use and it's mostly a matter of
usage/operations, rather than software.  You can make at least a
partial attempt by using appropriate browser extensions, staying
off all so-called "social networks", not using any services associated
with Google, Microsoft, Adobe, Yahoo, etc., and so on, but it's
important to note that these will only be partially effective and
that tens of thousands of people will wake up today and go to work
with the sole objective of defeating these methods, e.g.:

	Remember That Undeletable Super Cookie Verizon Claimed Wouldn't Be Abused? Yeah, Well, Funny Story...
	https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20150115/07074929705/remember-that-undeletable-super-cookie-verizon-claimed-wouldnt-be-abused-yeah-well-funny-story.shtml

If you'd like to read up on the multitude of methods available to attempt
to protect your privacy online, you may find these useful starting points;
they all contain numerous links to other resources.

	A Complete Guide To Privacy Online - GreyCoder
	http://www.greycoder.com/privacy-roadmap/

	EPIC - EPIC Online Guide to Practical Privacy Tools
	https://epic.org/privacy/tools.html

	Why PrivacySOS.org? | Privacy SOS
	https://privacysos.org/

	4 Simple Changes to Stop Online Tracking | Electronic Frontier Foundation
	https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2012/04/4-simple-changes-protect-your-privacy-online

That last one recommends AdBlock Plus: I think AdBlock Edge, which I believe
was created after it was written, is a better choice, since it doesn't make
exceptions.

---rsk



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