this post was submitted on 16 Jan 2025
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I was recently intrigued to learn that only half of the respondents to a survey said that they used disk encryption. Android, iOS, macOS, and Windows have been increasingly using encryption by default. On the other hand, while most Linux installers I've encountered include the option to encrypt, it is not selected by default.

Whether it's a test bench, beater laptop, NAS, or daily driver, I encrypt for peace of mind. Whatever I end up doing on my machines, I can be pretty confident my data won't end up in the wrong hands if the drive is stolen or lost and can be erased by simply overwriting the LUKS header. Recovering from an unbootable state or copying files out from an encrypted boot drive only takes a couple more commands compared to an unencrypted setup.

But that's just me and I'm curious to hear what other reasons to encrypt or not to encrypt are out there.

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[–] JubilantJaguar@lemmy.world 1 points 1 month ago (18 children)

Absolutely. LUKS full disk encryption. Comes as an opt-in checkbox on Ubuntu, for example.

And I too cannot understand why this is not opt-out rather than opt-in. Apparently we've decided that only normies on corporate spyware OSs need security, and we don't.

[–] savvywolf@pawb.social 3 points 1 month ago (10 children)

There is a major downside to encryption: If you forget your password or your tpm fails and you've not backed things up, then that data is gone forever. If someone doesn't have anything incriminating or useful to theives on their device, the easier reparability might justify not enabling it.

[–] JubilantJaguar@lemmy.world 3 points 1 month ago (9 children)

Why is this a problem for us and not for ordinary dummies on Android? It's been the default there for years already.

[–] savvywolf@pawb.social 2 points 1 month ago

Android backs up data to the cloud. If the phone breaks or gets stolen, you don't need to recover data from it - you can just pull it from Google's servers.

In addition, people tend to not treat their phones as "permanent storage". The concept of losing or breaking their phone is probably more clear, so they make sure to back it up in some way to the cloud or their desktop.

Also, it's much more likely for a phone to be stolen than a laptop or desktop.

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