My questions throughout this post are pretty much rewritten at the bottom of this long post, for anyone confused or busy!
Hello! I’m very new to doing research on my own privacy and have some concerns and questions that have been honestly a bit hard to get answers to. I’m just hoping for answers and maaayybe a few guides/suggestions to have me set on a good privacy/security path.
My main concern right now is the hardware/firmware/drivers collecting my data to send it to who knows where. I just got a new laptop (a Zenbook 14), and I’m wondering if I should return it for something that will collect less data on me?? I literally stopped setting it up because I didn’t like the privacy policy. It’s hard to even find out what data it keeps compared to every other brand out there. I don’t know where to look without feeling confused.
I don’t want to be paranoid because I’m a pretty average person, but I have a huge moral issue with anyone shoving their nose in my business without good reason. Do all phones and laptops/pc’s collect personal data that actually matters? What is a reasonable level of precaution to take with hardware, and after that, what should my next steps be?
I’m sorry if this doesn’t make sense; I’m confused even with the terms to use.
Basically, I have a new laptop, a Zenbook from ASUS, should I get a different one within that price range that is better for privacy and decent security for the average person? After my hardware, what OS should I get (probably the most important thing, but I know that answer is easier to find, so I’m not too worried.) If I change to a new (non-Windows) OS, like Linux, will I be able to do pretty much everything I would have been able to on Windows? I think apple is more secure, but I can’t do gaming in the same way there.
Practically all data collection is done by the applications you run, websites you visit and OS you run them on. Linux Mint is a great place to start.
All Linux OSs respect your privacy. Almost all apps you install on Linux you install are open source and written to guard your privacy. Which one you use won’t matter too much. Linux Mint Cinnamon is a good place to start testing.
For browser you’ll want to use Firefox, Mullvad Browser and Tor Browsers in the order of sensitivity.
For HW, there isn’t really anything you can do. It’s consumer HW. Buying a business laptop gives better security in general, like remote management, RAM encryption, smart card reader support and other corporate features.
So if I were you I’d see if I could get away with Linux alone, it can also be a gaming focused distro like Bazzite. If not, see if you have two HDD slots on your motherboard, and install Linux on the second one. That’ll save you a lot of effort on partitioning.
It’s generally much easier to compartmentalize like this, than to try to make Windows respect your privacy.
Is there anything besides games you need to do in particular? The fact is that you can’t do every thing in Linux you can in Windows, nor can you do everything in Windows that you can do in Linux.
SteamOS has mainstreamed Linux for games, but the games are still made for Windows (generally) and run in a compatibility layer. I’d try dual booting Fedora Secureblue, Fedora Silverblue, or Ubuntu* and seeing if you can handle the level of game support. Some people choose to have a separate device for games so that their important stuff isn’t sharing the same OS. For general web browsing, writing documents, etc, Linux is fine, but so would Android be mostly.
I would keep the laptop personally. I wouldn’t think they could collect info about you from Linux or during boot since they’d need a program with internet access. Even Apple only collects telemetry you when you connect to the internet after boot or in recovery mode, though when you’re offline MacOS stockpiles telemetry to send later.
Edit: *My thought process behind these recommendations by the way… It’s easier to learn the distro you want to use rather than learning two distros in sequence.
Fedora is good because it has frequent software updates, good software availability, and comes with SE Linux. Secureblue is a version of Fedora with extra security fixes, based on the “atomic” version of Fedora called Silverblue.
Ubuntu is the most widely used desktop distro, has the most software, wide hardware compatibility, the most guides, and the biggest community to answer questions. This is the option you take if you want to focus on running software.
You can learn Linux on any mainstream distro, so that’s why I’d pick one of those.
I recommend using using the Mullvad browser for anything you don’t need to be persistently signed in for. And don’t install any extensions or change the defaults, they are meant to make you appear the same as other mullvad browser users. The browser isn’t for anonymity, though it helps reduce your ability to be fingerprinted across the web.