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Comment by orbital-decay | Hacker News Reader

> If you are working with a desktop PC in your home and you feel really confident that nobody's going to have unauthorized physical access to the computer, you might want to do without encryption.

Do you also feel confident nobody will pick your drive up at the landfill where it's going to end up?

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Agreed, that feels like horrible advice. Even encryption with a password of “hunter2” is worthwhile in that it would stop untargeted access.

Crackhead burgling my home is significantly higher risk than the NSA trying to grab my data. If the NSA wants it, my cute 32 character random password is probably insufficient to stop them.

Yea, I'm not sure about the US, but a few friends have had their stolen phones immediately used to contact everyone on whatsapp asking for money, sim swapped and tried access for all possible 2FAs on socials, banking, whatever they can get a hold of within the same day. For something so easy to set up as FDE on a computer, or a SIM pin in addition to the phone's passcode (to prevent them from accessing the mobile network, which I forever dismissed but after seeing how they operate I started adding the pin as well), it's a no brainer really.

This is the first I have ever heard of a SIM pin. Which seems like a no brainier to configure, so definitely going to do that this weekend.

Doesnt it come by default on everywhere? Often with a weak 1234 code but nevertheless.

Yeah, back then I thought in the lines of "well whatever if they call people with it, what are they gonna get? Minutes off my plan?" But that was at a time when we didn't have so much tied to a phone number, or I could still opt out of it, which I did for years.

Working with a Desktop PC in your home isn't the same thing as throwing your obsolete drive in the trash.

There are precautions available to any user before they throw a drive away.

> Do you also feel confident nobody will pick your drive up at the landfill where it's going to end up?

I do, because it's not going to end up there. I still have possession of literally every hard drive I've ever owned.

I have never thrown away a drive.

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