IMO as long as their are many distros , people actively working on them and remaining open source I think its not too much to get worried about Linux heading to the dark side. Dennis
There is no way to delete Zeitgeist without breaking the Unity Launcher. Once broken it is like losing the Start menu, every software must be run from Terminal prompt. The suggestions of moving to a different Linux distro do not help. Tried Mint and Debian, both full of bugs and weird sht happening without any explanation. Like the shell messing up, network not connecting until manual reset, thumbnails needing root access, keyboard freezing and flashing. Might need to go back to Windows.
Wow sorry to hear about your bad experiences, I have had the opposite experience Mint and Debian I found to be pretty much rock solid....playing with arch now.
How to make PC hardware immune to USB hacking? Hackers can change the USB firmware in hardware, undetected by antivirus software which have no access to the firmware. I keep reading and find no way to stop the USB hacking, other than lame advice like "do not let strangers plug in unknown USB devices to your PC". Is there a PC type that has firmware verification to make sure no nasties from hackers are hiding in the firmware?
It is lame because I buy USB based hardware from online stores all the time, and have no way of knowing if someone else had infected it before it got to me. All it takes is 1 infected USB device to infect all your USB devices you use after. The advice forgets you become the "stranger" after you are infected without you knowing.
Well, that's a risk you have to take. The USB devices can also be infected from the factory itself, so...depends who you trust.
USB device can be infected from factory. From store. From customer returning an infected device which infects the factory or store. Everyone is a "stranger" when it comes to plugging USB device in your PC. There is USB storage device called IronKey which is immune to firmware hacking. But it costs too much and does not protect other USB devices. Which PC hardware is immune to firmware hacking?
Disable zeitgeist: Code: sudo mv /etc/xdg/autostart/zeitgeist-datahub.desktop /etc/xdg/autostart/zeitgeist-datahub.desktop-inactive rm ~/.local/share/recently-used.xbel mkdir ~/.local/share/recently-used.xbel rm -rf ~/.local/share/zeitgeist zeitgeist-daemon --quit cd /usr/bin/ sudo mv zeitgeist-daemon zeitgeist-daemon.bak sudo mv zeitgeist-datahub zeitgeist-datahub.bak Extra cmds: sudo rm -f /usr/share/dbus-1/services/org.gnome.zeitgeist.fts.service sudo rm -f /usr/share/dbus-1/services/org.gnome.zeitgeist.service
AFAIK, other than reverse engineering the firmware, there is no way to secure a USB device. There may be some elaborate system designed to do that, but I haven't seen it. None that I know of, or that I'd pay for.
You could disable read write access to removable drive's with a group policy, Kind of drastic though. Code: gpedit.msc Code: User Configuration \ Administrative Templates \ System \ Removable Storage Access \ All Removable Storage classes:Enable
Maybe login as user could protect the OS from getting infected and run cmd / format tool as admin to clean and full format it can remove any infecting viruses or use windows PE to format with hdd unmounted
I always reformat my device to two different file systems when it's been plugged into another system... pretty sure that wouldn't help with firmware hack though. I ordered a new usb stick from amazon... I'll tell you what we need, a device you can plug into that reinitializes firmware.
You're not talking about storage usb hardware i think? When it's about usb audio, wifi dongles (even for storage usb) etcetc... check if the packaging seal still is intact, if you don't trust the (licensed) sealer then don't buy it anymore After you bought it from a trusted vendor and the seals were intact, the "lame" advice is really the best advice...
from what i've read about Zeitgeist in the internet correct me if i am mistaken,it's an indexing service for unity and gnome but i am not really sure if it's sending some information to canonical
I prefer to remove Zeitgeist not just disable. How can you be sure disabling it really stops it logging?
Code: zeitgeist-daemon --quit sudo apt-get --purge autoremove zeitgeist zeitgeist-core zeitgeist-datahub && sudo apt-get autoremove That works on Elementary, should work on Ubuntu, haven't gotten around to playing with Ubuntu MATE 16.04 yet.