this post was submitted on 17 May 2026
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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?
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.
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.
In spite of the fact that they never happen and that government mass surveillance isn't a thing and hasn't been exposed repeatedly for decades and that we all know they have not been aiming to do this exact thing for the better part of a century and that they are genuinely evil and literally never prove themselves to be over and over and over.