Linux distros log a TON about what you’re doing by default.
Tonnes of software uses systemd-journald to log errors, the bash shell saves everything you type into the terminal, and wtmp, btmp, utmp all track exactly who is logged in and when, and the kernel uses dmesg to log a bunch of stuff.
While the system isn’t sending these logs to Microsoft or Google, anyone who gets into your system like police or hackers can see almost everything that you have been doing.
If you want to be private, you must disable them.
Yes I apt-get installed packages, and I’m proud of it. AND I’D DO IT AGAIN!!! ILL EVEN UPDATE EM!!!
gets arrested violently
I can’t stop finding this hilarious
Your safe is NOT secure! Inside it are papers that have all sorts of personal identification — taxes, deeds, identification. Anyone who gets into your safe, like police or hackers, can learn everything about you!
If you want to be private, you must burn them.
Is this some kind of copypasta? This is hilarious.
I disagree. If its keeping everything local it is inherently private. These system tools are there for security and auditing and troubleshooting. If you are worried about someone getting into your system and doing nefarious shit secure your device better don’t disable OS level functionality.
If someone can read your journal logs and your kernel logs you’re already fucked.
Dmesg requires root. The journal requires group permission. That would mean they’re either hacked in remotely through either your account or through root. Or they have physical access. The latter which can be resolved using LUKS.
If someone is in remotely you’re already screwed as that can mean they can easily get autostarting scripts going or malware.
Yeah agreed. You have much bigger problems to deal with if someone is getting access to these things without your permission.
This feels like bait. But really the answer is encrypt your disks or use something fully ephemeral if you are that paranoid about your hardware physically being compromised. Disabling all of your system logs which do not leave your system and removing any visibility you have is quite honestly the best way to screw yourself over. How are supposed to know if a system is compromised if you are covering your eyes and ears for the sake of obscurity?
It sounds like you want something that doesn’t lend itself to troubleshooting or useability. It can be done, though: pull your hard drive and run everything from a live USB with no persistent storage. Or just don’t use computers.
By that rationale, no machine is “private”, as they store all of your personal files and documents! 😬
Look out! Your computer is SPYING on you! Did you know your computer has ALL of your PRIVATE photos, documents, and personal information on it!
All it would take would be someone to have physical access to it and the encryption keys and they would have access to all of it!
I’m reading this post as a well-intended PSA for those who might not know that their computers keep logs, and I appreciate the poster for that. But also I got a laugh from it sounding kind of like this:
If you want to avoid providing incriminating evidence during a possible police interrogation, you must disable your brain’s long-term memory functions by lobotomizing yourself
That is the point. I know it doesn’t read very well but I wrote it as most people don’t know what their PC is secretly recording.
They turn off file history in the DE settings and always use incognito mode so they think their PC is amnesic except for the files they explicitly save, however it is not.
If a Cellebrite can dump the storage of a locked iPhone, intelligence agencies almost certainly can grab your logs.
FUD.
True Linux has logs. But they dont logs what websites you visit, what apps you start or what you do with your files. They log system events, errors, and such.
Linux logs are there to audit and spot errors, they have nothing to do with logging what you do.
Windows instead…
sudo rm -rf / ?
That just marks everything as deleted, use something like
shredorblkdiscard --secureinstead.
use the panic stick for those cases
Unfortunately, this global version of panic stick is really lacking. The US market version is really just a rebranded shotgun, which is far more effective. Even the EU version is a bit better, it has a grippy rubber handle and comes with a 2 year warranty.
Thanks for including resources on how to do all of that. /s
I would personally not recommend disabling all these things, and would recommend full disk encryption if you are worried about such things. Luks, vericrypt, probably others idk.
I don’t know enough about Linux to even start messing with the system. 🙂
No problem then! And more reason to not go about Dias’s long stuff, the logs are very helpful for finding out why what you thought should be happening, isn’t!
If uou were also worried about someone seizing your drives and thus getting your logs, then disk encryption, though like with all privacy and security minded stuff there is a convenience tradeoff. Also, if you lose the pass phrase, well… everything on the disk is gone.
https://linuxvox.com/blog/linux-luks-encryption/
Looks to be an ok guide to luks, if you wanted.
I’ve encrypted my external hard drives but I’ll have a look at the link. Much appreciated.
I had actually effectively nuked my Linux log files permanently on my first Ubuntu install back in 2011. I did that by mapping all the log files to ramfs on startup, and clearing all the logs still on storage to zero bytes.
I didn’t do that out of any paranoia or anything, I did that because I had Linux fully installed on a mere 4GB USB flash drive, so I wanted to eliminate as many unnecessary write cycles as I could possibly manage.
I also set the temp folder and internet cache to ramfs, much improved performance over the typical setup on a USB2 flash drive.
Just switch to physical pen and paper…
Wait, CRAP, did you know that a pysical notepad logs every pen stroke? not only on the paper it’s written, but it puts traces onto the next page as well.
Sure it’s not sending it to others… but if the police cease the notepad they can recover everything currently written in it, and possibly even some of the pages that were torn out from the indentations on the other pages.
