Because he literally broke into a server room and installed hardware to harvest this data.
There’s no world where any organization, for profit or otherwise, would tolerate that. Even your local library would call the damn cops if you tried that.
Can we be honest about this, please?
Aaron Swartz went into a secure networking closet and left a computer there to covertly pull data from the server over many days without permission from anyone, which is absolutely not the same thing as scraping public data from the internet.
He was a hero that didn’t deserve what happened, but it’s patently dishonest to ignore that he was effectively breaking and entering, plus installing a data harvesting device in the server room, which any organization in the world would rightfully identity as hostile behavior. Even your local library would call the cops if you tried to do that.
What they’ve done in the past has earned them trust, but it is irrelevant to what they intend to do in the future. Bitwarden is growing company, not the scrappy little open source app they once were.
In 2022, a private equity firm injected 100m into Bitwarden. From that point forward, users are rightfully going to scrutinize any action they take because it’s 2024 and the tech space is a hellscape of enshitification and acquisitions, thanks in part to VC money. We’ve seen this story play out too many times to assume there’s nothing to worry about.
So yes, people are going to be suspicious. That’s not irrational.
Right but you could at least be reasonably sure it wouldn’t be outright spied on from the person you’re sending it to. Now it’s almost a guarantee.
Like if I sent something to a friend of mine, I could be fairly certain it wouldn’t end up in the wrong hands unless they got compromised or did something stupid. I could trust their competence.
Now everyone that isn’t actively managing their own windows installation is absolutely compromised, as a rule. Like I can’t just send an email to my mom anymore, from now on its always my Mom and Copilot.
Yes, and that’s a valid concern, but there’s no good answer here. That’s why it’s such a problem. From now on, one of the most widely used operating systems in the world is going to be harvesting data from any and everything that appears on it. Meaning any software you use to send any form of electronic communication, if a Windows computer opens it, and the user either hasn’t bothered or doesn’t know how to disable recall, your information has been harvested by Microsoft.
There’s just no way to limit or avoid this. We need regulation.
Basically, you’re confined to the no-fun welcome channel zone—forever in slow mode—until you prove you can behave yourself, at which point Denuvo will elevate you to “Verified Player” status and let you get into the meme, chat, and dev Q&A channels.
And this, friends, is why so many businesses are closing their forums and other public facing, indexed spaces and using Discord. It’s a black box that they can gatekeep. No complainers allowed to kill the “vibe”, no publicly searchable database that will keep track of what has been deleted, and no visibility for the negativity to the general public doing a Google search on the product.
Moreover, they’re going to want an emulator that can be managed alongside the rest of the museum software.
That’s like saying what’s the point of the air and space museum if they’re not actually flying the planes.
They’re not going to use the original hardware and put wear on them. That’s a standard part of archiving.
Just for the record, this is exactly what any museum would do, because they’re not going to actually run anything on the original hardware. Those systems are part of the collection, and it behooves a museum to not put any wear on them.
Also because emulators can be managed remotely.
Secure from what exactly? You need to have a threat model here.
Which is funny, because developers use “secure” like this all the time as a way of scaring users into compliance for any changes they implement. If they voiced aloud what the actual threat was, they’d have to admit that often its the user’s freedom they’re afraid of. The user may do something stupid, therefore their ability to do it is dangerous for everyone.
They’d remove the front door on your home and call it more secure, all because some people don’t lock it.
That’s generally what you hear from people who have basic use cases and simply can’t fathom other people may want or need different things from their devices.
Which is fine, they don’t have to understand. If stock is good enough for them nowadays, more power to them.
What I’m sick of is the condescension. This bizarre thing where they somehow think a person wanting control over a device they paid for is worthy of derision or shame.
It’s like if someone who only checks their email on their laptop laughing at someone using a desktop for heavier work, for no real reason other than thinking using technology differently than themselves is silly.
That other comment is a perfect example, and indictive of this weird subculture in Android spaces that hates Google but seems to be drinking from the same user-hostile Kool aid.
Personally, I’m an odd case, in that I didn’t used to root or use custom ROMs at all until recent years. Basically since Android 10, simply to get around the needless roadblocks and restore the functions I want. I was fine with stock for a long time, until Google started becoming Apple.
Shit like this is why I can’t abide GrapheneOS or their cheerleaders.
It’s legitimately the same attitude as Google itself. This parental, condescending tone, acting as if wanting freedom to control their own devices is somehow irrational. Continuing to push this toxic idea that handcuffs are the only way to protect users. Like a sysadmin at a workplace, but without the justifiable reasons.
Find me any charitable, non-profit, or community organization that wouldn’t call the cops if someone was breaking into their networking closet to install data harvesting hardware.