Hi Michelle, First off I would like to apologise if my attempt at injecting a bit of tongue and cheek at the group was offensive, it was certainly not intended to cause offence. It is useful to understand the background to your decision to move to Whonix and Qubes. I must confess as a Fedora user I am not familiar with the Mint distro, as such I can't comment on any possible bugs. While I agree with Eric in that a Whonix, Qubes solution is possibly a bit of overkill given your intended use. The behaviour you described did sound very similar to common malware/virus behaviour. It would be uncommon but not impossible for something to be in the wild that could cause this on a Linux distro, as you specified being an IT chap I would be likely to do a little digging around to identify the cause. In order to get a secure/stable system you might also want to consider looking at well tested and used distributions such as Debian or Ubuntu. The LTS releases of these are usually very stable, and can be quickly secured. Then simple good internet safe use practices, such as only visit sites that you have reason to trust. Type in URLs manually and don't follow links to new sights as well as the never open an attachment in an email when you don't expect it, should keep safe. Finally if it means giving you peace of mind, then by all means don't let our opinions discourage you from the Whonix route, part of the appeal of Linux is the adventure of diving into technology and having the freedom to choose what you do and how you do it. Regards Paul Wilson
On 7/06/2016, at 3:43 PM, Michelle <michelle400(a)orcon.net.nz> wrote:
Well when I looked at the mailing list page today I was totally shocked to find I'd been maligned and attacked. I know that that happens on other forums (yes I realize this is a mailing list) but I didn't think it would happen here. I guess that I just got schooled.
Perhaps I should say a few things. The only reason for me choosing Linux over windows is security and safety. It may be different for computer experts, but that's it for me.
So anyway I have Mint on my Toshiba and some months back I clicked to a page with info on Oprah Winfrey. The site then clicked on and off and on and off etc. I closed the page and opened history. Here the site was listed maybe 25 to 50 times. Then say that day or the next, my most used folder disappeared from it's space. I found it in the thrash. And that happened with maybe another couple of folders. Someone said that Mint had had problems with a bug/bugs this year/last year?
So anyway I presume that I caught a bug and that it's still there. (Don't worry,the emails I send on this phone and not the Toshiba). This happened inspite of the fact that I use Mozilla, adblock and NoScript, although they may not have been up to date. Computer experts, if their machine gets infected may be able to debug it and be confident that it's clear, but I can't. I figure the best way to protect myself from now on is to have the safest set up from the start. And from a bit of research I did on the net it appears that that maybe Whonix and Qubes.
On 2016-06-07 06:53, Paul Wilson wrote: I would be trending to a tent inside a faraday cage, at least 50kms from the nearest populated town. :p Sent from my iPhone
On 6/06/2016, at 11:41 PM, Eric Light <eric(a)ericlight.com> wrote: YES I FIND THIS MUCH LESS ANNOYING, THANKS WILLIAM 😉 Battiness aside, I suspect the answer to Michelle's problem isn't Whonix on Qubes on an old laptop. It sounds like excessive engineering for no good reason. Did anyone else have similar thoughts? If I were going full-on paranoia mode, I'd be running TAILS, probably with a grsecurity-patched kernel, and probably through an offshore VPN. What do you guys think? E -- Securely sent with Tutanota. It's good, you should try it: https://tutanota.com [2] 6. Jun 2016 23:32 by will(a)artcontrol.me:
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