They are a search proxy, sending your query to Google, Microsoft, Yahoo and whomever else they partner with at the time. They don’t anonymize them either, which is how DDG works.
They plant trees. That was their thing. For the environment. I don’t know how they magically get lumped into privacy discussions. They don’t care about privacy at all.
I don’t think it was on purpose, but who knows what their facilities are like. Maybe their phones are built in a literal sweat shop lol.
In any case, it was a ridiculous thing to use to weasel their way out of a repair given how unreliable those markers are. I would definitely have taken as much evidence as possible and reported it to the consumer watchdog in your country.
I was under the impression that even just letters (no case) would take a lifetimes to brute force if you exceeded 15 characters. And that drops to just 11 if you mix cases, numbers and special characters.
That can be solved by opening the disc using VLC when makemkv is scanning. VLC will free up the lock.
I’ve been wrestling with something similar for a week lol.
There’s a thread about the error on the makemkv forums. And I’ve personally salvaged discs this way only yesterday.
Also, makemkv can open a DVD as a raw data file. Mine were old TV shows so I was able to pull the individual episodes avoiding the errors or at least getting some if one was corrupt. I saved an additional 3 discs this way.
One last method if you can set the speed of the drive to 1x; rip slow and set lots of retries (5) to maybe give it a slightly better chance. 1x was always the most reliable. Any speed over and you have mixed results.
Lastly, there’s a list on the net about best drives. If you really care and want to throw $100 at it, pick one up. The drives for $20 you find on Amazon won’t read anything a few years old. Theirs lasers are garbage compared to ones manufactured 10+ years ago.
But why. There are so many good, legit places. Why do you feel you owe them your allegiance. Even despite knowing it’s a scam. This is the weirdest behaviour to me, sorry.
This is the correct answer. A VPN encrypts and obfuscates all your connections, not just the web browser.
If all you care about is hiding the websites you visit from your ISP, DNS over TLS is fine. But just remember that you’re bleeding data by using your real IP (ISP, geolocation, etc.). And any other connection, is just unabashedly, you.
And a myriad of fake ones piggybacking off the original URL to JavaScript your mouse clicks into link backs so it takes 8 clicks on a link to find the file is dead anyway.