Para_lyzed

I agree with this sentiment 100%, but I think it lacks some of the context that these are children we are talking about. They aren’t being educated on privacy or security; not by their schools, and certainly not by their parents. This generation is being raised to believe that everything they do and say needs to be posted online to social media, and their concept of privacy is virtually nonexistent. Couple that with the fact that most of them don’t have a personal computer, and it leads to great levels of negligence with regard to their use of technology, and most relevant to this discussion, their use of school computers. The children being surveiled and exploited by this software don’t have the education on it to understand why it is bad, or even that it is happening to begin with.

So while yes, they shouldn’t have private communications on school computers, they don’t have the context to understand that or independently come to that conclusion themselves, thus those private communications will happen nonetheless.

Oh, on second look I suppose you are correct. Silverblue and Kinoite kept their names, but Sericea and Onyx (and all future spins) use the Fedora [DE] Atomic structure. I was under the impression based on the announcement that all of them followed that naming structure, since they are collectively referred to as Fedora Atomic Desktop spins now. That actually seems much weirder than having changed them all to the same structure, because it was intended to lessen confusion, but now half of the spins use a different naming scheme than the other? Strange choice imo.

Here’s the announcement I was referring to.

Interesting to note, though another user pointed out that this does not work the same way in the United States (political organizations still have to provide a means to opt out).

Yes, I believe all of that is in line with what I have stated. Just to clarify, my interpretation of the previous comment was that political parties were exempt from the requirement to provide an opt out in Australia for political parties (by my interpretation, just the official parties and not unrelated political organizations), and they implied they believed it to be the case in many other countries. I have not recently reviewed the relevant laws, so I was not 100% certain if that implication would prove true in the United States (though was pretty confident that was not the case by my previous experiences with messages from officially endorsed organizations), but I went on to explain how these are not officially endorsed by political parties anyway, so if such an exemption did exist, it should not apply to this particular message.

Thank you for the clarification!

Political organizations and non-profits are exempt from this list.

In that case, you’re best off opting out and seeing if it works. If you get a text from the same group at a later date, then you can report them to the FTC. Please do not do this unless they do not honor your opt out request, as politically affiliated groups are legally allowed to market in this way so long as they provide a means to opt out of communication. Falsely reporting puts strain on the already incredibly underfunded system and prevents real scams from being caught and dealt with due to a lack of resources. I recommend you keep a list of groups you have opted out from that is easily searchable to track this. 4 years ago I got multiple of these texts per day. I have been opting out every time I receive one, and now I have not gotten one in over 2 years. Eventually you will run out of groups to opt out of, and will only be messaged by newly created groups, which will happen much more slowly than all of the groups constantly texting/calling.

Beyond that, there isn’t really much you can do. Your number is on a list, and people are buying that list. Although you could see if putting your number on the national do not call list would help (EDIT: though apparently political organizations are exempt from that on further reading). I have not done this personally, but I came across it while looking up how to report scam texts. Perhaps it could be beneficial to you (who knows?)

Mine reset when I switched phones a couple months ago, and I had to manually add them to my new phone. If I hadn’t noticed, then my blocked numbers list would be empty. Not saying that is a common issue, but it doesn’t hurt to opt out before blocking; just don’t click any links or say anything other than the opt out keyword.

While I would have to find the US law and examine it more closely to tell if that is true here, these groups are not actually representatives of political parties. They are groups of self-proclaimed political advocates that try to raise money to host events that raise awareness of their causes for local voters. But they would not qualify for an exemption due to association with a political party, as they are not officially connected to or endorsed by a party.

True, but if you get a new phone and your blocked numbers list is reset, or they send messages from a different number, then you could get them again in the future. I see this often because there are multiple people in that campaign that will all reach out to people with their own phone numbers. Opting out prevents that for legitimate donor campaigns (you are removed from the list for all of the solicitors associated with that campaign), but obviously not for scams. There is no harm in doing both, and I would recommend that (it’s what I do).

Your number is on a list of real numbers with real identities associated with them that was sold to them. Data brokers sell this information daily. They already know your number is real, but in order to comply with the law, they have to provide you with a legitimate option to opt out, so you will actually stop receiving correspondence from them if you ask them to stop (it is legally required). If not, they could be subject to a fine, but you’d obviously have to file a complaint with the relevant regulatory body for that.

If you do not attempt to opt out, they cannot be fined for spam if this is part of a legitimate donation campaign. If you don’t reply, they will continue sending messages to you in the future. It costs them almost nothing to do, so even if they didn’t know your number was real, they would do it anyway. Most of the people who donate from these messages don’t reply through text message anyway. And if this were an actual scam, then there is nothing they gain from receiving a text back so long as you do not open their link. But again, in order for legal action to be taken (since these political reach outs are legal and not spam so long as there is an option to opt out), you must first try to opt out.

EDIT: Feel free to block the number after opting out. If they are legitimate (though the name is really fishy), then opting out will remove your number from all of their solicitors’ lists, so you won’t get texts or calls from different numbers working for the same campaign. Again, replying doesn’t give them anything even if it is a scam, as your number was obtained from a real list sold to them by a data broker; they already know the number is in service. Just don’t click the link in the text, and don’t reply with anything other than stop.

Fedora KDE Atomic Fedora Kinoite

Fedora is what I’d describe as cutting edge, but not bleeding edge. It’s still behind from source, and is semi-rolling release, so it’s further behind than Arch but way ahead of stable/fixed release distros like Debian

Idk, I think Gentoo and Void would be worse for a new user. But yeah, most other distros will be more new user friendly. Bazzite has a great new user experience, for instance

Since they’re running Fedora Atomic, the commands are through rpm-ostree, as dnf is disabled. I’ve provided the relevant instructions.

Since you’re using Fedora Atomic, I’ll give you instructions for rpm-ostree:

Run rpm-ostree status and find the deployment with the dot to the left of it. Example output:

State: idle
Deployments:
● fedora:fedora/40/x86_64/kinoite
                  Version: 40.20240509.0 (2024-05-09T00:47:51Z)
               BaseCommit: 2f8263a33190c4e1320233aebbdc8f337b0a6abcba371d4870ae43fba33aea62
             GPGSignature: Valid signature by 115DF9AEF857853EE8445D0A0727707EA15B79CC
          LayeredPackages: akmod-nvidia akmods asusctl asusctl-rog-gui libratbag-ratbagd mullvad-vpn rpmdevtools
                           supergfxctl virt-manager xorg-x11-drv-nvidia
            LocalPackages: rpmfusion-free-release-40-1.noarch rpmfusion-nonfree-release-40-1.noarch

  fedora:fedora/40/x86_64/kinoite
                  Version: 40.20240507.0 (2024-05-07T00:44:22Z)
               BaseCommit: c7fb680111ecf1736e473cf6f9169f69e5f2ec6b50814f7017bd6f9f3c1bdaf2
             GPGSignature: Valid signature by 115DF9AEF857853EE8445D0A0727707EA15B79CC
          LayeredPackages: akmod-nvidia akmods asusctl asusctl-rog-gui libratbag-ratbagd mullvad-vpn rpmdevtools
                           supergfxctl virt-manager xorg-x11-drv-nvidia
            LocalPackages: rpmfusion-free-release-40-1.noarch rpmfusion-nonfree-release-40-1.noarch

First one has a dot next to it, which means it’s the active version. Copy the value after “BaseCommit:” (in my case it is 2f8263a33190c4e1320233aebbdc8f337b0a6abcba371d4870ae43fba33aea62)

Run rpm-ostree db list <paste commit hash here> | grep amd. Example output (my command was rpm-ostree db list 2f8263a33190c4e1320233aebbdc8f337b0a6abcba371d4870ae43fba33aea62 | grep amd):

amd-gpu-firmware-20240410-1.fc40.noarch
amd-ucode-firmware-20240410-1.fc40.noarch

In my case, running the most recent update on Fedora Atomic KDE, it looks like I’m running version 20240410-1 of amd-gpu-firmware. Yours may vary depending on what update you’re on.

By the same (virtually nonexistent) logic, neither are games in general, or operating systems, or computers, or anything that is not strictly “necessary” for one to survive. Yet all of these things clearly have a strong intrinsic value to society, else we wouldn’t be working so hard on all of it. If you don’t enjoy VR, don’t use it; it doesn’t get much simpler than that. I can guarantee you that no one on the SteamVR dev team is going to care about your opinion or where you think their resources are better spent. Want to change that? Apply for a job at Valve. Pointless comments aren’t going to do anything.

Facebook has been selling your data to ad companies since the day you created your account. This only changes what you visually see on the website. It makes absolutely zero difference from a data collection standpoint. Just consent so you can delete your accounts with less hassle. Filing GDPR complaints through email is a pain, takes a long time, and has no guarantee that they’ll actually accept it. Plus, some sites (likely including Facebook) will ask for a government ID to verify you live in an area where the GDPR applies. It isn’t worth the trouble when there are easier methods. Once you’re able to log in, you should be able to access a GDPR portal somewhere in case you still want to file a report before deleting your account, but it’s up to you if you want to go through the trouble. At the very least that saves you from having to write a letter and either email or mail it to them. With Facebook’s consistent history of violating GDPR, I honestly don’t even feel like it’s worth it to try. Chances are that your data will still be sold regardless. Just look at all the lawsuits against Facebook for GDPR violations in the past years.

I’d argue SimpleX does it better, they’re even modifying the Signal protocol to support post-quantum encryption. No phone number, uses the Signal protocol, and has no user identifiers at all (no usernames, no account numbers, no account at all; everything is stored locally on your device).

Oh also, before the reply that Signal is post-quantum already, here’s an excerpt from the blog post I linked detailing why SimpleX’s implementation is better:

unlike Signal design that only added quantum resistance to the initial key exchange by replacing X3DH key agreement scheme with post-quantum PQXDH, but did not improve Signal algorithm itself, our design added quantum-resistant key agreements inside double algorithm, making its break-in recovery property also quantum resistant.

There is much more detail in the blog post if you’re interested. SimpleX also has an incredible whitepaper

The best options for you are going to be SimpleX Chat or Jami, depending on your use case. If you only need to make video calls, probably Jami is the easier option, but if you’d like to have a chat app with video call support, SimpleX is the right choice. SimpleX is also just a really good messaging app, because it has no user identifiers or accounts. They have a wonderful explanation of their method for two-way communication in their whitepaper if you’re interested.

Also, video calling in a “secure environment”, as you’ve stated, is not difficult in the slightest, and absolutely not impossible. There are plenty of options available. Others beyond the ones I gave are Jitsi (but it’s gone way downhill; don’t use it), Signal, Element (you do NOT have to self-host for it, you can use the main instance or any other instance), and the options open up to basically everything if you make a new user profile and install sandboxed Google Play Services in the new user profile (from the “Apps” app). With sandboxed Google Play, you can use apps like Zoom if you really wanted, but I’d strongly encourage you not to for the sake of privacy. You can download apps without signing into a Google account via the Aurora Store.

Yes, of course GrapheneOS can run SimpleX! SimpleX has no dependence on the Google Services Framework, and even for apps that do have GSF dependence, they can be run with sandboxed GSF. The only apps that don’t work on GrapheneOS are apps that try to use the SafetyNet, which is mostly banking apps, or those that require GSF to have deep root privilege to operate.