Ah yes, the closed-source proprietary black box antispy tool.
They'll spy on users usage habits, and likely backdoor their OS for the feds, but they won't individually exfil your browser cookies and steal money from your bank account.
A random closed-source black-box "privacy" tool though? You have zero guarantees.
What’s the difference between backdooring for the US gov’t and directly robbing/bugging you (assuming for the sake of argument that they don’t already do at least the latter)?
Used to be that you’d only ask that question if you were brown and/or write your name from right to left. Doesn’t matter much whether you were from Svalbard or Sanaa these days…
That may or may not be true, but I feel like the former would be a whole lot harder to hide, and the risk of having to reveal it in court would likely mean they aren't going to blow their cover over someone who wasn't worth it.
Like PRISM, Boundless Informant, Stellar Wind, etc?
Yes, it does.
>O&O has been making tools like these for a long time.
Microsoft has made Windows for a long time. Longer, even.
People don’t read the source. And chief among them, statistically, is you.
Open Source is ideal but not a deal breaker.
ShutUp has also been around for a while and always seemed to me like a O&O side project by someone who got really pissed at Windows taking the spyware tangent. The distribution model is still that of shareware / freeware (no source), because that's what O&O does. But as far as closed software goes, that's _probably_ as clean as it gets.
Windows has had built in defrag since at least WinXP. I can't remember if Win2000 had it - I think it did. It runs in the background and you don't have to worry about it. 3rd party defrag tools are snake oil, like registry cleaners and so on.
Also, a watching a proper defragmenter run was an OCD soothing experience before we had stray kitten and powerwashing videos galore. I know I'm not alone with this experience.
>OCD soothing experience
I've always felt it was a certain kind of person who found amusement in watching a defragger work. I'm absolutely sure that 3rd party tools made sure to incorporate the equivalent blinkenlights to give the impression that their tool did something useful.