Comment by x0x0
1 day ago
I don't think there's a good answer here.
Users absolutely 100% will lose their password and recovery key and not understand that even if the bytes are on a desk physically next to you, they are gone. Gone baby gone.
In university, I helped a friend set up encryption on a drive w/ his work after a pen drive with work on it was stolen. He insisted he would not lose the password. We went through the discussion of "this is real encryption. If you lose the password, you may as well have wiped the files. It is not in any way recoverable. I need you to understand this."
6 weeks is all it took him.
Some people will hurt themselves if given dangerous tools, but if you take all the dangerous items out of the tool shop, there won't be any tools left.
Microsoft seems to feel constant pressure to dumb Windows down, but if you look at the reasons people state when switching to Linux, control is a frequent theme. People want the dangerous power tools.
Tool manufacturers include all kinds of annoying safety devices to attempt to prevent injury, or at least to give them some cover in a lawsuit.
Table saw blade guards and riving knives are an ironic example here: I've yet to hear a story of a woodworker that lost a finger on a table saw that wouldn't have been able to avoid that injury if they kept one of those safety devices on the saw. Everyone thinks the annoyance isn't worth it, since they are an 'expert', yet it happens frequently.
Right, but none of those safety devices invalidate the underlying purpose of the tools. Disk encryption is used, for many people, for privacy. Uploading the keys to Microsoft defeats a lot of that.
If you bought a table saw and the "safety device" is that it won't run, I would imagine you'd be pissed too.
Genuine safety requires you give people literal kids toys. Those tools were made less dangerous, not safe.
Apple gives users the choice during set up assistant, no reason Microsoft can't.
I bet he learned a valuable lesson
Then you don't want encrypt by default and anyone who goes out of their way knows what they're doing
Okay, so then the default for 95% of users is no encryption at all and police (or the far more likely thief, roommate, etc) don't even have to bother with a warrant to get all your data.
Improving the situation ... how exactly?
Because now all the people at the computer recycle shop can't access all your old files including your family photos and saved passwords. They'd be missing out on all that fun.