I just acquired a new PC, and it hasn’t been turned on yet. I would love some advice and tips on what to do before I get started with it to protect my privacy.
I’m a privacy-conscious person, but not dogmatic about it. And honestly, this is the first desktop PC I’ve had since Windows XP was a thing. So it goes without saying, I’m very out-of-the-loop when it comes to Windows. I’m not opposed to putting a Linux distro on it, as long as it’s very easy for a beginner to learn on.
Really tho, I’d like to know if there’s anything I should or shouldn’t do as I’m booting the comp up for it’s first time. Im grateful for any and all advice here. Thanks!!
Edit: thanks for all the responses so far! I figured it’d probably help to list my use cases for the PC. It’ll mostly be used for gaming, music production & sound design, collecting music and movies (which will likely involve me regaining my old sea legs, hoisting the black flag, and sailing the high seas). At some point in the future, I wouldn’t mind learning how to host a media server for friends and family to access, but I got lots to learn before I dip my toes into that. My privacy concerns are pretty general - I’d like to prevent corporate data mining mostly, but since I may be screaming “yo ho ho” soon too, I’d like to be protected in those regards as well
If I recall correctly from the last time I saw this posted, the problem with projects like this that they rely heavily on very small teams making sure that every security update gets included from upstream, often not a simple task. Privacy from Microsoft is important but if you’re running an insecure OS then you may as well not have privacy from anyone.