Today i took my first steps into the world of Linux by creating a bookable Mint Cinamon USB stick to fuck around on without wiping or portioning my laptop drive.

I realised windows has the biggest vulnerability for the average user.

While booting off of the usb I could access all the data on my laptop without having to input a password.

After some research it appears drives need to be encrypted to prevent this, so how is this not the default case in Windows?

I’m sure there are people aware but for the laymen this is such a massive vulnerability.

  • Mio@feddit.nu
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    1
    arrow-down
    1
    ·
    13 hours ago

    I think on laptops Windows i trying to encrypt the drives. Maybe online if you are logged in to a Microsoft account for bitlocker to save the encryption key. Encrypting the drives should be your decision to take.

    • oo1@lemmings.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      1
      ·
      9 hours ago

      Yes, my sister bought a laptop it had windows and bitlocker installed.

      She doesn’t know what any of those things are nor does she have an encryption key.

      So she was not able to resize her partition to try to dual boot linux - she’d have to totally kill windows (which I suggested, of course, but you know. . . ).

      It stops her doing what she wants because she was given something she doesn’t understand by people who didn’t explain it. At least she is “safe” though according to someone else’s definition. I guess coud’ve just said “Basically, microsoft” for short.

      • Mio@feddit.nu
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        1
        arrow-down
        1
        ·
        5 hours ago

        Microsoft makes all the decisions for you.

        Try using a virtual machine before doing a full switch