OS Encryption? Why? Just a need to make things complicated?

[oshunluvr]

Just curious why one feels the need to encrypt your OS. Is it just paranoia or a desire to make things as difficult as possible?

I can understand (kind of) encryption for home folders, like maybe you don't want that embarrassing pic of you out in the open, but what's the point of encryption for OS and programs? So if you have a laptop and leave the house with it, and lose it somehow, are you worried that someone will see that you installed some program or other But why encrypt your OS at home

AFAIK tell, your log in password will keep someone off your system until they have it in there hands, then all bets are off. I can even easily crack a linux or windows login password in just a few minutes, so I get that's not real security.

I see so many people posting struggles with LUKS and LVM and other complications like they are international spies or something.

I'm honestly curious of the motivation behind it.

[Qqmike]

You know the expression, They do it because they can.
IOW, you can say that the "activity" is, for them, in the "hobby" category of life.
That's my conjecture as to, Why?
(Either that, or it's maximum paranoia!)

[oshunluvr]

You know the expression, They do it because they can.
IOW, you can say that the "activity" is, for them, in the "hobby" category of life.
That's my conjecture as to, Why?
(Either that, or it's maximum paranoia!)

Both or either make sense to me, lol

[Snowhog]

I'm honestly curious of the motivation behind it.

Porn? Worse?

[oshunluvr]

Yeah, seems obvious. But hard to believe that's the only reason...

[Schwarzer Kater]

a) To additionally encrypt everything on a computer that could easily be nicked, like a laptop.
b) In Germany/Europe there is the General Data Protection Regulation and in 2016/17 (before implementation) the lawyers of the company where I worked at this time told us that because of this we should e.g. encrypt all customer's data that was stored on the company's computers - it was easiest to encrypt the whole installation in multi-user systems then…

I don't think it makes any sense for a stationary private system at home, though.

[jlittle]

IMO encryption at the computer or file system level is a major compromise to reliability, and puts your data at risk. There's so much that can go wrong.

And, for me, the inconvenience is too much of a nuisance.

[claydoh]

Porn? Worse?

Tin foil hat cats.
Also the sort of people who were freaked out over every single notification and message from Zone Alarm way back in the day.

I happen to have my Fedora Chromebook encrypted, but only out of curiosity as to any performance hit, and it was a button to click.