Hi everyone! I’ve recently got my first ever Mac, it’s a MacBook Air M1 (16 GB).

My question is about malware, viruses and things like that. So, I’ve managed to create a VM of a MacBook Air M1 (8GB) with the same OS as the main machine on an external SSD, not logged into Apple and no personal information saved, not even accessibility to the keychain. My plan for this was to run suspicious apps, visit suspicious sites, basic stuff. The main machine is connected to the iCloud Private Relay, the VM isn’t.

My question is: if this virtual machine was to be hacked, infected by something or gained remote access or something, could the main machine be effected in any way? Could I be affected by any means?

When I’m working from home with the company laptop (has Cisco software and everything) and I use my own personal iPhone (with private relay) as a hotspot, can the employer see what I do on my phone? Like browsing social media, watching videos and stuff

I had an argument with an IT professor I know regarding passwords and security. I was mad about my in-laws having a weak WPA1 protected router and the stock password while I insist on having WPA3 and a very strong passphrase.

Well, the discussion continued and later he said something to the point of “everything tries to guess your password, so I don’t have any where it is possible, because the programs don’t know what to do if there isn’t one“

What are your opinions about this?

Hello world! It's me again with a question!

So, I remember back in the days of WinXP and Vista when we had the CCleaner or CCCleaner. I recently watched a YouTube video about some guy stating that it is so good and the best thing you can use today.

If I recall correctly, didn’t they get compromised like 7 times already and switched owners a couple of times?

Same guy talked about NordVPN being so cool and stuff but a friend of mine found some software of them on his server, I don’t remember what kind, probably some tracker or adware, and since the incident happened around the time everyone started to get sponsored by them, I don’t really trust VPNs.

Why do so many companies and people say that your password has to be so long and complicated, just to have restrictions?

I am in the process of changing some passwords (I have peen pwnd and it’s the password I use for use-less-er sites) and suddenly they say “password may contain a maximum of 15 characters“… I mean, 15 is long but it’s nothing for a password manager.

And then there’s the problem with special characters like äàáâæãåā ñ ī o ė ß ÿ ç just to name a few, or some even won’t let you type a [space] in them. Why is that? Is it bad programming? Or just a symptom of copy-pasta?