Athlonite:

well The just aswell my Router is German made then they'll just tell the NSA nein friggin zee firmwarez

Can I ask how come you have the permission to add a signature? I don't seem to have this permission

geogan:

Well I would be the opposite. The government agencies can do you a lot more damage.

Yes, government agencies can do a lot more damage, but the fact of the matter is, for everyday people like you and I, they don't. Of the people who do get affected, they usually deserve it. That being said, if you fear them, you're either being completely irrational or you're a criminal. Keep in mind, depending how far a black-hat hacker gets into your stuff, they could ruin your life a whole lot worse than a government. The difference is you won't see it coming, and it can happen to people who are completely innocent. Meanwhile, if a government wants to blackmail you, they don't need evidence. I mean this in the least offensive way possible, but on the grand scheme, nobody gives a crap about you, who you are, what you aspire to be, or your ideals. The same goes for me, and probably everyone else here. If you're rich, governments want to be on your good side, where it would be against their interest to bother you; a criminal, however, sees you as a good target. Just be a half-decent human being and you are nothing more than just a number to governments. And when I mean half-decent, I mean that pretty loosely. You could shoplift, shoot up heroin, or vandalize other people's property, and you'd still be under the radar of the NSA. Sure, they might keep track of that stuff, as well as the weird fetishes you search online, that popular movie you pirated, or your dark-humor jokes, but you are just one of hundreds of millions of people who have done the same thing.

Most of these mass media news scare stories are really engineered to get everyone to install "Big US based agency Toolkit v.2.1" by stealth.

And yet ironically, you're still buying into it without literally buying into it. You may not use "Toolkit v2.1" but you still seem take these scares seriously anyway. In your perspective using your logic, you will lose no matter what. If you update to "Toolkit 2.1" government agencies get a backdoor to your data. If you refuse to update, you will get outdated security measures that black-hat hackers are equipped to take advantage of. If you go for some obscure piece of software that you feel you can trust, it will be an inconvenience (whether that be because of high demand of system resources, software incompatibility, lack of features, content portability, etc). My point being: if you fear backdoors and government agencies, you might as well live off the grid, because in order to effectively protect yourself, your computing experience will be compromised or miserable.

ask HH geogan

Athlonite:

ask HH geogan

I did. https://forums.guru3d.com/threads/change-add-signature.417430/

schmidtbag:

I mean this in the least offensive way possible, but on the grand scheme, nobody gives a crap about you, who you are, what you aspire to be, or your ideals. The same goes for me, and probably everyone else here

No offence taken. I know this well.

schmidtbag:

If you update to "Toolkit 2.1" government agencies get a backdoor to your data. If you refuse to update, you will get outdated security measures that black-hat hackers are equipped to take advantage of

I know this. It's a constant game and challenge. I still refuse to upgrade to Windows 10 because of what it is designed to be.

geogan:

I know this. It's a constant game and challenge. I still refuse to upgrade to Windows 10 because of what it is designed to be.

Windows 7 and 8 aren't really any better, MS was just less obvious about their data collection. Regardless, if you're aware of all of this, why would you intentionally prefer the less safe route? Sure, the probability of a hacker targeting you or your network is pretty slim, but the probability of any government targeting you is effectively 0% (well, maybe - I don't know what you do on your free time that may raise a red flag on their end). It just doesn't make sense to me why you refuse to update because a company or an organization wants to collect data that they'll probably never look at, vs intentionally keep yourself outdated so you're available to be attacked by an unknown and unpredictable source.

Gurus, a lot of patches are issues from various vendors and devices, as well OSes.But I think that some devices will be left without patching.Until I set up a pfSense box, I upgraded my DD-WRT firmware and added MAC filtering (not sure if it helps at this point)