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On my laptop I'm only holding high sensitive data. I want to disable the OS from going online or connecting to bluetooth devices at all and indefinetly. I want it to be impossible to go online with the device, maybe by deleting the networking drivers or so.

Is that possible?

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  • Intriguing question, but I don't think this is specific to elementary OS. You might want to ask this in AskUbuntu or even Unix & Linux, where the audience is larger and more people may be available to help you.
    – waldyrious
    Commented May 26, 2018 at 18:53
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    Remove the wifi/bt card from the computer
    – Jeremy31
    Commented Jun 3, 2018 at 15:35

3 Answers 3

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On my laptop (Dell Latitude E7740) there is a switch on the side that disables wifi and bluetooth. In the bios I can change which devices this switch disables or enables. Just below my screen there is an indicator (antenna symbol) that shows the status of this switch. Most laptops I have used had a similar switch and indicator.

Switching off Wifi and bluetooth is a crude but effective way to avoid data-leaks. It is wise to have a plan B. For instance, encrypting the data on you laptop would render the information useless to a malevolent receiver. Or always using a VPN connection to lower your chances of getting hacked.

There is plenty of practical information on the net about securing a laptop.

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  • Answer is correct. The best way to truly does this is to disable the devices in the bios or simple remove the wifi module entirely. It's not as difficult as you might think on most laptops. Try bios first and set a decent bios password.
    – MagicPepsiCan
    Commented Aug 6, 2018 at 16:22
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maybe not exactly what you are looking for. But I use TLP for power saving. And it has a nice settings in config file to manage wireless interfaces.

So try sudo apt-get install -y tlp tlp-rdw and then edit file /etc/default/tlp.

For me is enough to set RESTORE_DEVICE_STATE_ON_STARTUP=1 so that if I disable bluetooth once, it is disabled "forever". Same for Wifi. Which I use sometimes. And it is nice it remains in state I set before turn off.

Or try DEVICES_TO_DISABLE_ON_STARTUP option, if it suits you better.

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As someone told you in the comments, the safest way to do this is to remove physically the network card, unplug the antenna and the bt device

If you want to be sure you have to do that

Now if you still want a software solution for a hardware problem...

you could mask the services... throw them into /dev/null

  1. Stop

    • sudo systemctl stop <servicename>.service

  2. Disable

    • sudo systemctl disable <servicename>.service

  3. Mask

    • sudo systemctl mask <servicename>.service

Note: some of them have also <servicename>.socket, do the same as above to them

To list services

service --status-all

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