I don’t know. I’m sure it only transmits when active, but that doesn’t mean its not collecting data at all times. If you’re on windows you can turn it off with a script, but it might turn back on after major updates.

I would probably argue they are the same in terms of security and privacy. Privacy communities tend to disfavor Proton because its all eggs in one basket, and also for political reasons. Both of those are subjective to your personal threat/privacy profile.

Its true that a single point of failure is more risk than separate services, but that fact doesn’t undermine their security on a technical level, and has nothing to do with privacy. As for the political, yes it’s something to watch but nothing wrong has been done. They are set up as a non profit with checks and measures in place to prevent corruption from happening. I’m OK with different points of view and having different points of view on a board is a good thing.

Steam has telemetry. They gather a ton of data on you. What details, how they use it, and how secure it is I can’t answer, but it’s clear that it’s happening.

I’m no ghost, not even close. Be careful though, “what’s the point?” Is essentially the question everybody asks at every phase of that iceberg diagram.

A possible answer to your question though, is that even if the state doesn’t know or care about him today that might change tomorrow.

That’s not my threat profile but it’s a valid one.

Moving to GrapheneOS doesn’t have to be full bore. While it obviously wouldn’t be as private, you could run google services sandboxed. That restricts google quite a bit rather than giving it full rights to everything on your phone. Other features you can take advantage of are granular permissions per app and the ability to easily turn things on and off (such as mic, camera, location), restrictions to contacts, restriction to files/folders, etc… Youd be amazed how much you can clean up your exposure even with google services running. But yes, you’d need to give up using google apps like calendar for any of it to do any good.

Absolutely this. I like mint because I no longer like fiddle farting around with my PC. It just works out of the box. An overlooked bonus is when I need to learn how to do something the Mint forums usually have the answer, and its catered to Mint defaults. It’s not the end of the world, but when answers match your file explorer, text editor, system editor etc…it just makes it easier. Compared to finding answers elsewhere that are for Debian and then having to wonder if it’ll work or not based on the family lineage of the OS is just unnecessary for most people.

Well, considering all the tobacco companies entrenched themselves in food companies you’re basically right.

It’s why foods are addictive, and have very little nutritional value. It’s beyond “oh no its full of sugar” it the fact that everything is processed and is full of fake sugar (as an example).

Correct. While there are many (good) programs available for no money, that is charity based on desire and passion.

Free in FOSS isn’t about price, it’s about freedom.