Hi. My school just started issuing devices last year, and they have this Lightspeed spyware on them. Last year I was able to remove it by booting into Linux from a flash drive and moving the files to a separate drive and then back at the end of the year. This year I have heard from sources that they have ways of detecting someone booting from Linux so I am hesitant to do that option. My only other idea is to buy an old laptop off eBay that looks like it and install Linux on it. I could probably get one for about 50€. Does anyone have any cheaper ideas?
Oh also talking to IT isn’t an option.
It depends how far down the rabbit hole you’re willing to go.
Today you can make sure the source code is truly what you intend, by running Linux on PC and GrapheneOS on Android. You might not have the ability to audit those, but others (like me) do, and are doing so.
Whether you believe us or not is more philosophy - but join us in the rabbit hole and see what you find. You’ll find detailed public technical discussions of security and privacy. You can find some of that for closed software and hardware too, but we can never do as good of a job in that discussion without the source code.
If you want open auditable hardware, you can stick to Raspberry Pi.
There’s an open hardware project for phone too, but it’s more of a proof-of-concept, today, as far as I understand.
If you want the TL;DR version of where I landed - I posted this from a Pixel running GrapheneOS.
Graphene on a pixel 5 here my brother
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You can compile your compiler from source.
Edit: Here’s how: https://www.linuxfromscratch.org/
Edit 2: I know you can hear the rabbit hole calling to you. Join us. Follow the rabbit trail.
But seriously, it’s cool, you’re curious about it, and the pay from the jobs it leads to tends to be pretty great.