Privacy

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A place to discuss privacy and freedom in the digital world.

Privacy has become a very important issue in modern society, with companies and governments constantly abusing their power, more and more people are waking up to the importance of digital privacy.

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Tails no longer recommending balenaEtcher (tails.net)

submitted 3 days ago by xela@lemmy.ml to c/privacy@lemmy.ml

185 comments fedilink hide all child comments

I am shocked by this - the quote in below is very concerning:

"However, in 2024, the situation changed: balenaEtcher started sharing the file name of the image and the model of the USB stick with the Balena company and possibly with third parties."

Can't see myself using this software anymore...

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[–] Xttweaponttx@sh.itjust.works 3 points 1 day ago

😂 I also read this as Ron's voice!

Nah as much as i love doing stuff via terminal, I am extra paranoid specifically about writing to the wrong device and losing data; I prefer as many confirmations as possible that I'm writing to the correct drive, and graphical installers tend to give me just a few more reassurances. A few examples would be stuff like

a graphical representation of partitions (the general layout of a drive tends to offer an easy 'fingerprint' in my mind; like the pattern of partitions help me confirm I'm looking at, say, a Debian install USB compared to a single-partition general purpose storage disk)
icons for different types of devices, like an SD card, USB, or hard disk icon
confirmation dialogues summarizing what device is targeted, and what all will be performed

I'm also the kind of person who stares at a written email worrying about every last nuance of my phrasing, so 🤷‍♂️😂 definitely a me problem, I think!