Incoming tenders with prompt injection in … Three … Two … One.

Excellent.

Unfortunately, I strongly suspect that the depth of the pockets paying for legal fees is likely to determine the outcome, rather than any pesky facts.

This seems like the mobile phone crazy development cycle from the 1990’s.

“We’re just gonna try this, perhaps people will buy it.”

In this case, I’m going with:

“Item discontinued due to lack of interest.”

OP was talking about Lineage, not Graphene.

If an app doesn’t have data it cannot share it.

If you don’t install the app, it cannot breach your privacy.

You don’t need direct internet access to leak information, for example, an app with access to your calendar has indirect internet access.

Keep your existing phone and OS.

Use it differently. Decide what information you store on it, which applications you install or disable, what permissions you grant and what services you use.

Just installing an OS to “debloat and degoogle” is not ever going to change anything unless you change your habits and you don’t need to change OS to do that.

If you’re in Europe I’m guessing that you have a GDPR breach case.

Note that I’m not a lawyer and don’t pretend to be one on the internet.

You already know the answer to this question.

The Hollywood hacking depictions are equivalent to seeing syringes being used on film. To the uninitiated it looks “real”, the reality is somewhat different.

Source: I’ve been an ICT professional for 40+ years and have had hundreds of (medical) needles poked in me over much of my life.

Privacy breaches come in many guises … this is one of them.

Yeah … that thought occurred to me as well.

I wonder if there’s a way that you can legally monetize the process, so the organisation who left a gaping hole … or several bazillion in this case … gets an education in corporate security and the researcher gets paid for their efforts. A corporate symbiosis if you like.

If course the non legal way is extortion … but that tends to go towards warfare and mutually assured destruction, rather than collaboration.

Perhaps this opens the door to a white hat penetration testing department at the corporate regulator who issues fines (which pay for the work) … but I’m not seeing any evidence of an appetite for anything even remotely resembling such a set-up anywhere on Earth.

Espionage on the other hand …

There is no file at that URL (anymore).

If that was the case when you tried this, nothing happened.

If there was a script there when you did this, the only option is to restore from backup.

Seems like prima facie evidence evidence to me that Intel is about to go bankrupt. It reminds me of the “Intel Inside” warning labels of the 1990’s … seems like a good idea, until you realise that it’s sinister and counterproductive.

Seems that someone needs to re-watch Minority Report.

The study:

https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/10.1086/691462

What is an Ubuntu LTS release?

An Ubuntu LTS is a commitment from Canonical to support and maintain a version of Ubuntu for ten years, with the initial five years available for free following Ubuntu’s mission. In April, every two years, we release a new LTS where all of the developments from the previous two years accumulate into one up-to-date, feature-rich release. These releases focus on performance enhancement and stability. The LTS is what we recommend to large scale enterprises, general users and businesses. However, for more dynamic users, every six months throughout those two years there are also developer releases. These releases are kept up-to-date and relevant, with the latest and greatest contributions, but are only supported for nine months at a time.

Source: https://ubuntu.com/blog/what-is-an-ubuntu-lts-release

The reason you pick an LTS release is so you get Long Term Support.

Use the support.

By moving to a non-LTS, you not only reduce the duration you get support, you also increase the frequency of doing updates. This is not desirable while you’re learning.

Or you can inject a bot:

https://embracethered.com/blog/posts/2024/hiding-and-finding-text-with-unicode-tags/

Pretty much the same.

Word of warning. Your /home directory contains your documents, but it also contains configuration files. If the packages you’re installing have different versions, you might discover that the config file for a different version doesn’t work on the version that’s installed. This isn’t universally the case, some applications are smart about this, others less so. You can find many of them as “hidden” “dot” files.

You can find all of them like this: find /home -type f -name '.*'

Explanation:

• find - the find command
• /home - the place to start looking
• -type f - find files only
• -name '.*' - find things only starting with a ‘.’

I hear your frustration and understand what you’re concerned about.

Ask yourself this.

Is the thing that I’ve discovered is broken today something that I’ve fixed before?

If you use the package manager that comes with your distribution and don’t install random software from the Internet, and don’t follow unverified procedures written by anyone with a keyboard, then the answer is almost certainly “no”.

I say this with the benefit of knowing what’s good practice and what isn’t. I can tell you that if you come at this with a “Microsoft Windows” approach, you’re likely to spend weeks, if not months in purgatory. It’s no different from migrating between MacOS and Windows, or vice-versa. You need to remember that just because Linux looks similar, it’s a different beast and is so by design.

I’d strongly recommend that you start using the machine with ONLY the packages available through the Ubuntu package manager. If you run into strife, you can ask for support. If you go outside that and you break something, you get to keep both parts – and truth be told – that’s true with any other operating system, just that the lines are not as blurred.

In Linux world many of the distributions can cross pollenate applications and solutions, but that requires experience that new users don’t (yet) have.

One way to deal with the “jump” is to keep your “old” Windows (or MacOS) machine around while you get comfortable with the lay of the land.

The thing that most people switching to Linux have forgotten is that this requires experience. You cannot expect to just jump into a new Operating System and take all your old habits with you. Think for example about the differences between iOS and Android, a world of difference.

So, keep at it. This frustration will pass.

Make sure you backup your /home directory regularly. That way if you ever blow something up and are left on your own, you can blow away the drive and start again, restore from your /home backup.

Meanwhile, keep asking questions.

Good luck.

Think of your workstation running Ubuntu Studio as new shoes that need running in.

I’ve been using Debian Linux as my primary desktop for over 25 years. The amount of downtime I experience is negligible. When I look at the sheer volume of MacOS updates requiring a reboot, or the absurd number of “fixes” pushed by Microsoft, I’m very content.