#tech safety

one of the reasons why I post and reblog a lot in the tech safety tag is that technology has ever been a lifeline of the oppressed and a weapon of the oppressor. greater oppression goes hand in hand with greater surveillance.

Sent by a five-digit number rather than a full phone number.

After the first text, I got a phone call that I sent to voicemail because I was driving. When I got to listen to the message once it was safe to do so, it was a robo-voice reading the above text. They called and left a second copy of the same message later. I haven't received any texts or calls since, because I blocked the numbers (the 5-digit for the texts and the 10-digit for the calls).

Thing is, for starters, I can't find anything about this in an internet search. Second, Goldman Sachs is a global investment firm. Couple things wrong with this.

I don't have any accounts with Goldman Sachs.

Why are they checking on my safety?

And why are they so determined to reach me as to message me twice and call me twice (and potentially more but I blocked them so I don't know)?

Now, it may be relevant that I have a New York phone number (I don't currently live in NY, but I didn't bother to change my number after I moved out of the state). I'm not certain, but I do get an amount of spam/scam calls to my phone that assume I'm still in NY, including requests (for my husband, not me) to vote in NYC elections. My husband, who did change his phone number when we moved to be an in-state number, has not received anything like this.

This just...seems really hinky. I have vague recollections of seeing warnings about potential scams coming from 5-digit text numbers fishing for responses for whatever reason.

Tails is a portable operating system that was made to make it more difficult to trace your computer usage back to you. You don't need to get rid of your existing operating system to use it. Instead, Tails is installed onto a USB stick and runs off of RAM, leaving your computer untouched. This also means you can bring Tails with you across multiple computers.

Installing an operating system to a USB stick might sound daunting, but they've made it as easy as possible with step by step instructions for Windows, Mac, and Linux computers. It didn't take me more than 15 minutes to get it on a stick.

Nothing is saved to the hard drive of whatever computer(s) you use it on. This means that you're not saving any evidence of what you were up to.

By default, Tails forgets everything you did on it. When you shut down the computer, it wipes everything, even the stuff that normally gets missed. This makes it impossible for someone to figure out what you were doing if they get ahold of your Tails stick.

If you need Tails to remember some things (like files you're working on), you can set up encrypted storage that won't be deleted on shutdown. Someone would need your password to see anything saved there. Someone could see that you have encrypted storage enabled, though, so gauge your risk accordingly.

All connections to the internet go through the Tor network by default, making it much harder for someone to see what you're searching for and doing online.

Tails also randomizes your MAC address, which means that someone can't track you in a local network.

Make sure you read the documentation if you're in a high-risk situation; there's advice on how to make sure your online activities can't be linked together. The rest of the documentation also has great advice and goes over different options in a simple way.

article dated Oct 9 2024

Hive Systems updated their table showing approximately how long it would take to crack your password via brute force based on the types of characters used along with password length. Doesn't factor in commonly-used phrases, words or character combos. The link leads to a page providing details on the methodology used.