TrueCrypt Concerns

Hello to Wilders. This is my first post at your forum and I look forward to being a member.

I am here by invitation of KookyMan who has been a regular poster at the TrueCrypt Forums. He made an invitation to Wilders at those forums. As many of you may know, the TC forums were down for almost a month, from August 12th until September 8th. They were gone without warning and reappeared without explanation. It has happened several times before, but never for almost a month.

I posted at TC upon their return about my concern that the forum disappeared and reappeared without explanation. Yes, it's free, but I feel if you're going to have forums then you have an obligation to the customers, free or otherwise, to let them know about things like the month-long removal of the TC forums. I'm just old fashioned enough to believe that courtesy goes a long way. I was friendly in my message to TC, just concerned. Others, who have also been members for a few years, posted responses echoing my feelings. The response from TrueCrypt was simply to delete my thread! That's troublesome, especially after my membership there that dates back to the beginning of the forums and some of the first releases of TC.

KookyMan also noticed the purging of some posts that could be explained as being irrelevant to the current version. However, I poked around and found many other missing posts which have no possible reason for scrubbing except the need of TC to maintain strict control over "the message." Again, troublesome.

TrueCrypt is a wonderful product. I work in the government sector and we must use different crypto software to maintain compliance in our department, but I use TC at home for various purposes and have always found it to be excellent software. It's a shame that the discussion of the software is now being monitored for dissent and apparent "scrubbing" has occurred.

My first question: How conversant on TrueCrypt are members here at Wilders? I enjoy a mix of highly technical discussion along with mundane matters of TrueCrypt "tips and tricks."

Thanks, KookyMan, for the invitation to Wilders. I have looked around it it seems to be quite a busy place!

 

Well, for knowledge of TrueCrypt, we're definately rare, but hopefully enough of the regulars saw my invite before it was expunged... I'm about to just abandon my account there.

Justin is here, and while he's not overly active, I think he'll take care of your "technical" discussion.

Racoon just joined too.

If they deleted your thread, I'm sure there will be a new "Rule" about it.. or they'll consider that a violation of the "no discussing what mods do."

 

As said before, I am 99% sure they banned Justin. I don't think Justin is against TC. But those guys on TC don't seem to be able to take any critisism.

 

Who is KookyMan?

 

Me?
10char

 

Yeah I know, I was only playing around

 

I'm here.

Hi People, I saw your invite! And it's good news to hear Racoon may also be here. Well, in a thread (I asked about the missing persistent volume mount option) I said thanks to DavidXanatos and said I will leave the boat, because the the thread deletions. (I realized the Spacex "Forum absence" thread disappeared).
Needless to say, this thread disappeared as well.

I cannot write more now, but my opinion is, lack of communication is lack of a big and important part of a good project.

CU
Michael

 

Since the TC team started with their email policy, I saw so more threads deleted in the TC board than in all other boards I visit (and thats quite a lot).
And they have read the PN's of other users till they ware completely disabled.

I'm glad to see many people from the TC board here and hope more will come soon.

 

TC forum TOS #14 is new, is it?

A typically sad direction a forum can go. Mods seing pink elephants everywhere.

EDIT: BTW, KookyMan, you told Racoon joined us as well. At least there's no user with this name here... Are TCTemp/TCGina now allowed according to the TC rules, or aren't they? According to TOS#9 I'd guess tcgina is banned!?

 

From what I know already befoure the TC board was down booth racoons projects ware removed form the board.

 

He's here, but I can't remember his nickname.. I'm sure he'll make his presence known.

And yes, its now against the forum rules to discuss TCGina or TCTemp on the TC Forums. Those plugins have been around I believe at least the better part of two versions, 4.3 and 5.x. Now they are suddenly "Evil".

What a crock. There are a lot of people still using 5.1a, and 4.3a. I'll be honest, I don't know if I'm going to upgrade to 6.x. I would like some of the features, but its when v6 came out that all hell broke loose with the forums so I'm not sure how much I trust 6 at this point.

 

You're right.

You're right. I'm certainly not against TrueCrypt, and, in the past, I've emphasized the importance for its developers to make good design decisions because of its position as one of the more influential pieces of cryptographic software. I'm just not under the impression that any cryptographers are actually behind the scenes.

I don't yet trust it; honestly, though, I want to. I want it to flourish, because we need software that gets folks excited about using cryptography. One half of this problem is making cryptographic software that's as transparent as possible; this frees the user from worrying about how to use it. The other half of the problem is making a case for why they need to be using cryptographic software.

When you mix an intuitive interface with a religiously-devoted community, you have yourself a recipe for getting folks excited. TrueCrypt's potential for this is second to none; whether or not it's realized is up to the developers. I do give a hoot, which is why I bother criticizing.

It reminds me of Randy Pausch's thoughts on criticism. Critics are the ones who let you know they still care; when the criticism ceases, they've given up. From personal experience, critique from another cryptographer is invaluable, and TrueCrypt, with its widespread recognition, should be milking that for all it's worth.

 

Yup, it's sad. Of course there's still use for TCGina - multi user PCs. As Windows should be known as a multi user OS (maybe the TC people didn't know) there's probably pretty often need for TCGina.

But currently I do 80% of my stuff on Vista - Maybe Racoon will offer a TCGina for Vista one day. I'm feeling pretty naked on Vista I'm looking forward to the day where I can encrypt user profiles under Vista.

 

I think TC is due for a new update soon.

 

Actually I would move the point in time where the hell broke loose to the day they implemented the new email policy. And so also distrust 5.x versions.
Keep in mind that the new XTS mode came with 5.0 and not with 6.0 and I guess the implementation hasn't been changed since its compatible in booth directions 5->6 and 6->5, so eider distrust booth or one I would say, and racoon checked the binary of 6.x for their compliance with the sources.

@Squeller
From what racoon tolled me He is working on a TCGina replacement for vista:
http://tcuser.t35.com/

 

This is good news indeed, thx for the URL.

 

I too have come over to this forum as well simply because I so highly value the opinion of all who have actively posted through the years. Despite the strange behaviour at times of the TC Admin, I still think the forum there is valuable as well.