Whom can you trust with your data?

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ISSUE 21.26 • 2024-06-24 Look for our BONUS issue on July 1, 2024! ON SECURITY By Susan Bradley Taming that technology Two years ago, we added a tagli
[See the full post at: Whom can you trust with your data?]

Susan Bradley Patch Lady/Prudent patcher

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abbodi86, SueW, Steve S., fisher75, DLivesInTexas, lmacri, Norio

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<pedant> Surely it is “Who can you trust with your data?” </pedant> !

BATcher

Plethora means a lot to me.

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NaNoNyMouse

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Whom is correct.

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SueW, Mark, rbailin, Will Fastie

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Nah! Whom is correct, but almost everybody says Who nowadays, so both are now accepted. Years ago who was considered incorrect in this case because it is used as an object.

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NaNoNyMouse

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Quite rightly commentators have jumped on the privacy issues but I’m surprised there has been no comment on storage impact. Taking screen shots every few seconds must consume a lot of disk space.This could be a big issue for those with just SSD storage that is more expensive than HDs and thus tends to be of smaller capacity. I’ve read no comment on how long the data is kept or whether this is configurable.

Which reminds me, I must clear out my old Firefox browser history – it normally takes ages to delete older months.

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Since most SSD’s, especially the smaller MVMe versions, now use quad cells (i.e. changing one byte actually changes 4 cells instead of just 1 or 2) all that writing to would definitively quicken how fast it reaches its write cycle lifespan limit!

 

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b wrote:

Whom is correct.

Your assertion would carry more weight if it was taken from a recognised source of grammatical information (such as Merriam-Webster) rather then “Strategies for Parents”

You should never use “whom” unless you’re 100% confident that you’re using it correctly. Here it simply sounds pretentious (and wrong)

“Who can you trust with your data?” would have been just fine

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BATcher

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NaNoNyMouse wrote:

Your assertion would carry more weight if it was taken from a recognised source of grammatical information (such as Merriam-Webster) rather then “Strategies for Parents”

Who is used as the subject of a sentence or clause, and whom is used as the object of a verb or preposition.
…
Whom can also begin a question, but as the object of the verb. “Whom were you visiting?”
…
For serious writing you’ll never go wrong following these basic rules,
…
So when speaking, who is often used in place of whom, especially at the beginning of a clause.

Merriam-Webster — Who vs. Whom

Whom is not wrong.

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SueW, Mark, rbailin

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This morning’s Newsletter email came through without any images.  Can you please re-send it?

thanks

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Alan wrote:

Can you please re-send it?

Sorry, we cannot resend the email.

Images in the emails are simply links to the images in our media library. All the images are in the library and are accessible. Please try to view the newsletter here on the site; if you don’t see images, refresh (Ctrl+F5) the browser.

We are aware that some people are encountering this problem and we are looking into it.

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Sent you an email this a.m.

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Yup,  no images in today’s issue.

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See https://www.askwoody.com/forums/topic/we-are-aware-of-issues-with-images-in-todays-newsletter/

Susan Bradley Patch Lady/Prudent patcher

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When our kids were teen, I installed parental control software on my computer. It did everything Recall did. It was totally under my control and the data didn’t get sent anywhere except when I asked it to send it to me. I trust Microsoft to do this ethically. Any abuse on their part could bankrupt the company with law suits and lack of confidence.

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I’m not a power user but do have a great deal of important and confidential information that I try to safeguard and backup in a number of ways.  I’m happy with my current Windows 10 setup and am planning not to move to Windows 11 until the summer of next year. Call me old fashioned, but I’m going to wait!

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Amusingly, your initial question requires an alarmingly simple answer…

Absolutely no entity other than yourself. Period.

Even the most well meaning and conscientiously administrated service will, not might, experience some failure that exposes your precious data.  It could be machine, but more likely will be human error.

Keep your information private within your own environment, protect it appropriately, pay for quality consulting if you can’t handle this yourself, and never ever use other people’s servers to store your data, except for a few special cases that simply must be handled by a third party due to the logistics of doing it yourself.  VoIP and E-Mail services come to mind.  If you must store data in the cloud, perform the encryption locally and only place pre-encrypted data on cloud servers.

As for why Apple seems to get less push back from its users…  I don’t think “trust” is the answer.  My experience with Apple users are that they blindly use the features on their devices without thinking because they are more interested in the “cool new features” than in what they just compromised to get them.

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windbg

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I get asked the question “Whom can you trust with your data?” with respect to, if my computer needs repair, who can I trust. That’s an entirely different, but very real and important question people have. If you take your computer to a repair shop, you are putting your trust in a complete stranger that will have complete access to your data.

I’d love to see how you might answer this question.

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WSbobby-p

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…if my computer needs repair, who can I trust…

No one.
Separately encrypt your private data on your computer. When your device is repaired, they don’t need access to that file set to repair. If your private data disk fails, you have an image backup of your private data that can get restored [even to another disk]. Using encryption products such as password managers and encrypted virtual disks make this happen. Once you get your computer back, do a full system scan for malware and change the OS logon password you gave to the repair shop. If a keyfile that doubles your protection is in the clear when the repair happens, it will need to be replaced. The required general step is to use encryption for your private data that is separate from the operating system. Your data can then fall into categories such as: some personal files you don’t care much if they escape and the others no one ever sees under any circumstances, other than yourself.

Windows 10 22H2 desktops & laptops on Dell, HP, ASUS; No servers, no domain.

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Hi Susan,

Who would have imagined that staying still, treading water etc.  could limit exposure to AI?

Susan Bradly.

I now have a perfect reason to avoid upgrading. Upgrading is way overrated.

Thank you.

 

 

 

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WSbobby-p

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KevSpa wrote:

My experience with Apple users are that they blindly use the features on their devices without thinking because they are more interested in the “cool new features” than in what they just compromised to get them.

I use Apple devices due to its commitment to security, privacy and support, like no other.

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Susan Bradley wrote:

Recall is designed to capture screen shots every so often (apparently measured in seconds), then allow you to scroll through that history so you can more easily remember what you were doing — and thus what you were thinking. Not unreasonable, right?

In my experience, not at all necessary.  What I may be doing at any given time stays open until I have finished it.  I may have a number of bits and pieces open during the process, but they will all stay open until I’m finished with them.

Every morning I update my checking, savings and credit card accounts.  This involves opening MS Money, an Excel spreadsheet, Firefox, and two or three fresh downloads from my credit union.  I use three .ofx files on my desktop for the downloads, never changing the names of those files, but changing the names of the downloads to match those files, so that they get overwritten by the download, and I’m always dealing with the same files.

Everything stays open until I’m satisfied that everything matches and balances between MS Money and my Excel spreadsheet.  Once I’ve accomplished this, I have no need of trying to remember what I was doing/thinking; I’m finished with that for the day, but can bring it up at any time with shortcuts on my desktop.

When I download video from my GoPro or phone, it always goes to the same partitions on the same drive that I’ve used before.  I open my video software and import new files to edit them.  If I get interrupted, I just leave everything open and minimized to the Taskbar until I can get back to it.  If open software and video files can’t remind me of what I was doing, I don’t think Recall would be of any help.

Long running projects have their own home in folders on a particular drive, and it is a simple matter to re-open those files and pick up where I left off.  During my XP days I developed a storage scheme that matched my methods/habits of working.  Over the years I’ve fine-tuned my setup, but it remains basically unchanged.

I’ve never really trusted Microsoft to do anything the way I wanted to do it, so I’ve done the same thing with Windows that I accomplished with my storage scheme; I bent it to my way of doing things.  I have no need for Copilot, so it’s not on my PC’s (all up-to-date Windows 11 Pro).  I have no need for a Microsoft user account, and there are none on my PC’s.  I do need a Microsoft user account for OneDrive, but that’s all handled online when I log into my PC with my local account.

We were all once “Average Users”.  We don’t all have to stay in that rut.  Knowledge and experience builds confidence.  While I use OneDrive, I also have my own cloud, a NAS with 7.27TB of storage.  Everything on OneDrive is also on my NAS.

Always create a fresh drive image before making system changes/Windows updates; you may need to start over!

We all have our own reasons for doing the things that we do with our systems; we don't need anyone's approval, and we don't all have to do the same things.

We were all once "Average Users".

Computer Specs

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Alex5723 wrote:

I use Apple devices due to its commitment to security, privacy and support, like no other.

I would have to disagree with that.  Just consider the issues Apple had when it was learned  they let their contractors ‘regularly hear confidential details’ on Siri.  Hardly the mark of a company that valued your security and privacy.

But Apple does have a walled garden approach to limiting what apps you can use, and their computer platform is severely limited in software applications, so the threat vector is absolutely smaller than Windows in that respect.

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Q: Who can I trust with my data?

A: Those I explicitly give my data to.

Hint: It’s not those who want to auto-upload my data to their clouds, install spyware on my workstations and servers.

In today’s world, more and more I feel like I alone am the only one I trust with my data.

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Fred

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As I see it, Recall is another “feature” for Malwaresoft to track everything we do with our computers. First thing to turn off, if you can.

 

Also, with 24H2 coming out soon, what happened to 24H1?

 

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Microsoft moved to a once a year feature release.

Susan Bradley Patch Lady/Prudent patcher

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I use Perplexity AI.  It uses several platforms for their search. I don’t need to up grade.

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Mike wrote:

In today’s world, more and more I feel like I alone am the only one I trust with my data.

Lost in the World

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Fred

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NaNoNyMouse wrote:

Mike wrote:
In today’s world, more and more I feel like I alone am the only one I trust with my data.

Lost in the World

Y’re not alone
but it’s cold out there

* _ ... _ *

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NaNoNyMouse

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