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.
In this community everyone is welcome to post links and discuss topics related to privacy.
much thanks to @gary_host_laptop for the logo design :)
School computers are riddled with spyware & proprietary software, the fact that they use windows is bad enough, but then you are forced to use edge or chrome and other proprietary software and often you are blocked from installing open source alternatives like librewolf or duck duck go may be blocked.
What I am asking is, how can we get around this, do i just need to bring my own laptop using FOSS privacy respecting software. or is there another way around this. Thanks for the help.
the only thing you can do is just using your personal computer. what's what i've been doing in school for years.
I'm dead scared of even thinking of using my corporate phone or laptop for personal use. I think i've never done a personal search or sent a personal email or even made a personal call using company devices. I kown they are logging every single thing i do because they've even told us in our annual cybersecurity training. Just run two seperate and parallel lives ;-)
You don't.
Seprate your work life and your personal life.
There's nothing wrong with advocating for FOSS alternatives; but you don't get to decide what you can or cannot use on work devices, that's up to your employer. You should not be entering personal info/performing personal tasks on work devices.
If you're unwilling to perform work with the tools (software) your employer provides/requires, find a new job. Refusing to do the work or tampering with the equipment provided is a great way to get fired.
For school; personal laptop. Or again strictly school tasks on their devices.
If the company or school isn't more privacy-conscious, it's their problem, not the employee's or student's. Naturally if they don't use these devices for private matters. You can only warn of these problems and how to alleviate or solve them, if they do not pay attention, you only have to shrug your shoulders.
That's the point of school and company computers. To keep all the nasty software you need for your work away from your personal laptop, which you'll want to buy yourself.
No amount of privacy-friendly software you install on top of Windows thoroughly compromised with corporate MDM is going to save you.
If you must use your personal machine during work hours, tether it to your phone's data connection or use VPN if it is allowed.
Only possible way would be booting into a USB drive running Linux or something. But BIOS is almost certainly locked down so I doubt it. It would also run like shit (but so does windows with 7 different scanners running amirite?)
I cannot stress enough how bad of an idea it is to try and use a boot or portable apps usb.
Schools and companies are generally very alert about that kind of thing due to many many high profile incidents of malware, ransomware, data exfiltration etc, and also all the movies and tv shows.
Bring your own device is the only way. Bring your own network is often a necessity, so be prepared to tether your phone to your device for internet access.
You also probably want to look normal too. Swallow your pride and use a mac when you do this and no one will bat an eye. Break out the duct taped together thinkpad at your own risk.
Man, back in my day I used to drop portable apps (I was one of the devs) on our network shares and use it that way because it didn't work from a flash drive. Bur I helped IT so even when they found out many months later, they left me alone.
Bring your own laptop and don't connect it to the network if possible. You have very little control over how those devices are managed, so the best you can do is either use them strictly for school work only, or avoid using them at all.
You can't, really, if your employer or school doesn't provide their own hardware, best you can do is pick up a burner box to quarantine their stuff to in order to separate it completely from your main system.
You won't get anywhere if you end up having to use their devices.
If you're able to bring and use your own, just use it how you normally would. Maybe throw on a VPN while you're at it though, (assuming you have to use their Wi-Fi network) since a lot of these institutions use filters on the router level, but if all they see is a stream of arbitrary traffic from your device to a VPN company's server, they won't get much info or blocking ability.
You can discuss with your IT department or bring your own, I don't see many alternatives to those two situations.
Use a Linux LiveUSB. Sometimes it works. They're dead simple to set up, too.