yes. if you live in a country without democracy. it is the only way to protect yourself and your data from nsa agent kicking your door.

For my laptop, yeah. I rarely actually use it though. For my desktop not so much. I really don’t keep that much personal information on it to begin with, and if someone breaks into my house they could probably get more by stealing the desk my computer is sitting on then by stealing the computer. It just feels like a silly thing to waste my time with.

I don’t encrypt because it’s too much effort to learn about it.

Id rather keep my filesystem unencrypted so that I can easily recover from problems and encrypt important files as needed, but let’s be real I don’t do that either.

Depends on the use case. Definitely for my laptop though. In fact the decryption keys only exist in two places:

1. Inside my TPM
2. In a safe deposit box at a bank.

I used to, but not anymore, except for my laptop I plan on taking with me travelling. My work laptop and personal laptop are both encrypted.

I figure my home is safe enough, and I only really need encryption if I’m going to be travelling.

One of my friends locked himself out of his PC and all his data because he forgot his master password, and I don’t want to do that myself lol

I wanted to but everyone on Lemmy told me I was an idiot for wanting a feature Mac and Windows have had for a decade (decrypt on login) .

But seriously it’s just not there on Linux yet. Either you encrypt and have two passwords, or give up convenience features like biometrics. Anything sensitive lives somewhere else.

Honestly… Why bother? If someone gains remote access to my system, an encrypted disk won’t help. It’s just a physical access preventer afaik, and I think the risk of that being necessary is very low. Encrypted my work computer because we had to and that environment also made it make more sense, I technically had sensitive customer info on it, though I worked at Oracle so of course they had to make it as convoluted and shitty as possible.

No.

I spend a significant amount of time on other things, e.g. NOT using BigTech, no Facebook, Insta, Google, etc where I would “volunteer” private information for a discount. I do lock the physical door of my house (most of the time, not always) and have a password … but if somebody is eager and skilled enough to break in my home to get my disks, honestly they “deserve” the content.

It’s a bit like if somebody where to break in and stole my stuff at home, my gadgets or jewelry. Of course I do not welcome it, nor help with it hence the lock on the front door or closed windows, but at some point I also don’t have cameras, alarms, etc. Honestly I don’t think I have enough stuff worth risking breaking in for, both physical and digital. The “stuff” I mostly cherish is relationship with people, skills I learned, arguably stuff I built through those skills … but even that can be built again. So in truth I don’t care much.

I’d argue security is always a compromise, a trade of between convenience and access. Once you have few things in place, e.g. password, 2nd step auth, physical token e.g. YubiKeyBio, the rest becomes marginally “safer” for significant more hassle.

No. I break my system occasionally and then it’s a hassle.

My laptops are encrypted in case they get stolen or someone gets access to them at uni.

I encrypt everything that leaves my house since it could be easily lost or stolen, but it is rather inconvenient.

If someone breaks into my house, I’ve got bigger problems than someone getting their hands on my media collection. I think it would be more likely for me to mess something up and loose access to my data than for someone to steal it.

laptop yeah

desktop nah

I don’t https://xkcd.com/538/

I’m convinced the chances of me losing access to the data are higher than encryption protecting it from a bad actor.

Let’s be real, full disk encryption won’t protect a running system and if someone has physical access and really wants it, encryption won’t protect you from the $5 wrench either.

I do encrypt my phone data though, as someone running away with my phone is more realistic.

I don’t think I encrypt my drives and the main reason is it’s usually not a one-click process. I’m also not sure of the benefits from a personal perspective. If the government gets my drives I assume they’ll crack it in no time. If a hacker gets into my PC or a virus I’m assuming it will run while the drive is in an unencrypted state anyway. So I’m assuming it really only protects me from an unsophisticated attacker stealing my drive or machine.

Please educate me if I got this wrong.

Edit: Thanks for the counter points. I’ll look into activating encryption on my machines if they don’t already have it.