Over the past year I have done a lot to shore up my digital privacy and security. One of the last tasks I have to tackle is locking down the many personal files I have on my computer that have potentially compromising information in them (e.g. bank statements). Right now they are simply sitting on my hard drive, unencrypted. Theft of my device or a breach in access through the network would allow a frightening level of access to many of my records.

As such, what are my options for keeping certain files behind an encryption "shield"? Also, what are the potential tradeoffs for doing so? In researching the topic online I've read plenty of horror stories about people losing archives or whole drives due to encryption-related errors/mistakes. How can I protect against this scenario? Losing the files would be almost as bad as having them compromised!

I'm running Linux, but I'm far from tech-savvy, so I would either need a solution to be straightforward or I'd have to learn a lot to make sense of a more complicated solution. I'm willing to learn mainly because it's not an option for me to continue with my current, insecure setup. I do use a cloud-based password manager that allows for uploading of files, and I trust it enough with my passwords that I would trust it with my files, though I would like to avoid that situation if possible.

With all this in mind, what's a good solution for me to protect my personal files?

Link to the announcement -- Do read it, it's a short email.

I'm posting this here because I think it generated some good discussion over on HN, which unfortunately got .. flamewary. (Is that irony?)

I've myself created and moderated several large-ish communities over the years and my views on codes of conduct are mixed. I'm always trying to make an envi. They themselves can range quite a bit, with 'opponents' to CoCs often picking the worst offenders in terms of overreach as examples. To me, it's always felt like the software engineering world is rediscovering... forum guidelines?

This is a politically-charged topic now, where almost all discussion on CoCs being centered on black&white "if you oppose them then you're basically alt-right". This makes the topic of CoCs an interesting example, IMO, of how we ("we" as in "the internet") give loudspeakers to the most extremist voices, silencing nuance.

Reminds me of a post by @deadaluspark here discussing the effect that this increasing divide has on us.

Well anyway, I brought up the announcement in question because Stallman (someone who tends to usually be pretty radical and have clear cut opinions) positively surprised me. This seemed to resonate with people, especially the parts about replacing sticks with carrots. It felt pretty good to see someone ignore (probably by virtue of being shielded from it) the politically-charged side of the topic and simply focus on trying to improve communication. Sounds cliché, but I feel that this approach has gotten very rare the past 4-5 years, and its higher frequency on Tildes is part of why I've been enjoying reading the comments here so much.

Everyone hates ads. Frankly, no one wants to pay for anything online. And places like CoinHive offer a service that doesn't clutter the screen and pays people. Too good to be true right? Well the first group of people to latch on the service ramped up the mines to 8 threads at 100% because they were hackers and didn't care if they slowed your computer or drained your battery. They just wanted their almost untraceable money.

What I'm proposing is that if sites were to use miners that instead use 2/4 threads at 10% thereby using far less resources, across enough users provided your traffic is ok, could the results be tangible if we gave it a chance?

edit: I hate cryptocurrency but I was more trying to discuss the idea of getting paid for passive CPU usage more described in this comment by @spctrvl

It’s no secret that the Internet has significantly changed even from just a decade ago. I’ve been thinking about online communities - particularly forums - and I’ve really begun to miss the sense of discovery when finding a new one while browsing online. It was like lifting a rock and finding an entirely new collective of people writing to one another about anything (complete with graphic signatures). It was an internet subculture in progress. Something something Wild West.

Small forums like that did a number of things that I feel we haven’t been able to replicate. You got to know people over time. It wasn’t a feed you vaguely subscribed to, but a forum (in literal definition of the word) that you chose to participate in.

I often think about what probably defines a typical experience online for people these days and I feel that the smaller and more cozy feeling of actual community has been replaced by the digital equivalent of big box stores. Twitter, Youtube, Facebook, Twitch, Netflix. Big corporate places with portals and algorithms.

These aren’t necessarily bad things in and of themselves (aside from the chasing of a world in which nothing is left unplanned), but I’m trying to hone in on the idea that the sheer randomness of this medium has more or less vaporized. The concept that anything and everything you do on the Internet wasn’t aggressively being tracked and developed into digital profiles to be traded, used, shared, and sold by ad companies and an array of other organizations was a fart in the wind compared to what it’s like online today. Websites simply didn’t have 5 megabytes+ of Javascript whereas now you need a half a dozen browser extensions to make the internet a halfway decent thing to be on.

My hunch is that once upon a time, people (at least those that even had access to it) had a kind of amateur desire of wanting to create an account at a website (particularly a forum). Coming up on 2019, I think long and hard before creating another account anywhere. There even was an expectation to introduce yourself in some introduction subforum at many of these boards.

A theme that has become completely domineering is the inflated ego linked to tribalism. I see people being so serious about everything; there can be no reciprocal discussion about anything.

I think it’s probably trivial to dismiss this as nostalgia but I feel there are some real truths to this. The Internet is something you had the choice of actually logging off and disconnecting but today, everyone is constantly connected. We are in the age of distraction and preoccupation. Think about it: how many times have you picked up your (smart)phone purely out of reflex, not even to check something with purpose? You see it everywhere in public, certainly. The constant stream of brightly colored iconography, beeps, alerts, buzzing, push/notifications, and beyond are endless. Everything demands your attention, and it is never enough.