this post was submitted on 12 Oct 2025
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Privacy
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Browsing history, Downloads folder, cache, etc. That's good to have encrypted.
ur def right about this. there are a few other things (e. g. cached mail etc) that would be good to encrypt, which I don't do right now.
if my computer gets stolen I figure no one will bother with my data unless they stand to immediately gain financially. e.g. ransom. my data (I have backups) or access my bank info (I keep this encrypted) and steal my identity. so I protect against this as best as I can without sacrificing usability too much
Also I am pretty sure I have at least some secrets in my shell history
Just encrypt your home then.
Don’t forget /tmp, and maybe logs too. Theres docker storage and kvm image locations if you use that. Maybe others. FDE also makes an evil maid attack much less trivial too.
I don't know, I don't see a lot of damage or unpleasantness stemming from someone getting into my /tmp, but I don't want any llm being fed contents of my /home. I am less afraid of an attack, as I am irked by corpos putting fingers into my shit
corpos aren’t who you’re protecting against with encrypted drives… they’re not going to gain access to anything via bypassing your OS: they get everything via software you’ve installed or things like tracking
the main thing you’re protecting against with encryption is theft (or if you think you’re being physically targeted, it also stops them from modifying your system… eg replacing your kernel or a binary that gives them access somehow)
Indeed. Best to think of disk encryption as protection from physical access -i.e., theft, but also accidentally recycled drives later on. It provides zero protection from somebody attacking your running system, that's the job of the operating system and client software like web browsers. While the system is running, the drive is decrypted and unprotected.
I just prefer fde because it's simpler. There's no guessing about what needs to be encrypted and what doesn't. There isn't any human-noticiable performance impact on modern computers, so there's not really a downside besides having 2 password prompts whenever I actually do a full reboot.