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this post was submitted on 17 May 2026
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You mean that thing everyone knew about since the authorities derailed open-source TrueCrypt and forced them to message their users that they should migrate to BitLocker?
Well, there's a big difference between "knowing" something and knowing something (i.e proof your intuition is right).
There's an open-source successor to TrueCrypt called VeraCrypt. For that matter, as far as I know, one can still download the last version of TrueCrypt. It hasn't been disappeared.
It's true that the TrueCrypt developers retired and said that commercial packages like BitLocker were finally good enough and available enough that they didn't feel compelled to maintain TrueCrypt. I remember that. I think it's plausible that Microsoft has (or has provided to someone) back-door access to BitLocker, but I don't remember any hint that the TrueCrypt developers had been coerced; have you got something you can link to?
Certainly at the time there was talk of coercion, there was talk the developers had been asked to put in a backdoor, had refused and then been encouraged to cease and desist their work on TrueCrypt and provide written recommendation of BitLocker, the wording of which did not seem to be their own. But people like conspiracies, maybe the authors did just move on, and if that was encouraged it probably was not as sinister as suggested. Security and privacy will always be duking it out.
These days, if you're not on Windows you can use luks or just zfs with encryption enabled. Code is open and can be audited by anyone. But yes, VeraCrypt to my knowledge is also still a viable option.