Hi. My school just started issuing devices last year, and they have this Lightspeed spyware on them. Last year I was able to remove it by booting into Linux from a flash drive and moving the files to a separate drive and then back at the end of the year. This year I have heard from sources that they have ways of detecting someone booting from Linux so I am hesitant to do that option. My only other idea is to buy an old laptop off eBay that looks like it and install Linux on it. I could probably get one for about 50€. Does anyone have any cheaper ideas?
Oh also talking to IT isn’t an option.
Why would you not separate personal devices from school devices? If you can afford a personal device, do so; it won’t be the last time.
It’s a laptop owned by your school, so they can install spyware if they want to. More importantly the school likely has policies against removing or otherwise tampering with it. You would be wise to find out what they will do if you violate this policy. It could be anything from a slap on the wrist to expulsion.
Any decent IT department will eventually figure out if you disable it. They’ll know fairly quickly if it stops “phoning in” if the spyware is any good.
Like all school rules, they are incredibly vague and the punishment is whatever they see fit. I kid you not, “no hacking” is one of the rules.
Not using the school given device is the best course of option unfortunately. Second hand ones are good, but the specs will be pretty bad
I don’t mind bad specs. I actually just want to use it for school. I was hoping not to spend money on this though.
When I was in high school I had my school laptop and my Linux laptop, if I needed to do work I would download the file on the school laptop and use a USB to move it to my Linux laptop to work on it. It was tedious but was the only way as we had latitude 2 in 1s that had a soldered in ssd. So I couldnt swap hdd, I ran zorinOS on a Lenovo t450 and it worked really well for school work
—edit Light speeds a bitch
Yeah, that’s not spyware, it’s called mobile device management and if the school owns it, they have every right to monitor it.
I don’t give a shit. I am required to use it and it has a fucking keylogger. You have to be a complete idiot to say that isn’t spyware.
Sassy. You’re required to use it for school work. No one is forcing you to use it on your own time, get your own personal device for that. Cope.
If it truly does have a keylogger then that’s really bad as it means they have access to your passwords and any other sensitive data you might type. How certain are you that it includes a keylogger?
You don’t NEED to give a shit. It’s their hardware, they can do as they see fit with it. If you don’t like it then don’t use it. It really is that simple. You can be as indignant as you want, but the answers that many have already given you in this regard will still ring true.
Use it as is, or don’t use it at all. Those are your options. Get over it.
And for fucks sake, stop giving everyone here a bunch of attitude just because you don’t like how the real world is.
Disregard whatever you’ve heard about installing Linux on the device, find the agreement given with it and see what it says. If no reference is made to doing your thing then returning it with the same setup, I’d say you’re in the clear. I’d bet the agreement covers damage, lost and stolen aspects plus returning it good condition, yet if you reinstall the software like it was provided they’d have to be very explicit about not loading Linux. If they do, you could use linux on a USB without installation. This could get you off the spyware while not breaking the rules if they are in writing.
Bring your own device. Run it on your own wireless Internet connection (cellular). Never attach it to any private (read: school) resources aside from a power plug. Do not use corporate cloud (Amazon, Microsoft, Apple, etc). When you need to transfer assignments from personal computer to school computer, use your own cloud service like Nextcloud, or use GPG to encrypt the payload and send it to your school email address, which you can decrypt and send to your teacher. It will then be public and you should assume the teacher is techdumb and will put it on compromised systems like Apple, Microsoft, etc.
