"DO NOT BUY A OLD USED COMPUTER, there can be trojans in the firmware, or exist a SMM backdoor. also do not use any closed source(Windows, Chrome, ...) use linux or bsd. do not use proprietary/binary driver for your GPU, there can exist a backdoor there too.


your level of paranoia is up to you, but i always have "nc -e sh -p 9090 -l" running."

Perhaps the manufacturer put malware in the BIOS, it's hard to know without the source code.

If the OP wants GNU/Linux on his computer, he should try http://trisquel.info">Trisquel GNU/Linux.
There is no proprietary software in it, as it is one of the nine free-as-in-freedom GNU/Linux distributions endorsed by the Free Software Foundation.