Some users have recently had their accounts hijacked. It seems that the now defunct EVGA forums might have compromised your password there and seems many are using the same PW here. We would suggest you UPDATE YOUR PASSWORD and TURN ON 2FA for your account here to further secure it. None of the compromised accounts had 2FA turned on.
Once you have enabled 2FA, your account will be updated soon to show a badge, letting other members know that you use 2FA to protect your account. This should be beneficial for everyone that uses FSFT.
You'll need a lot more math than Algebra to really get a solid grasp on crypto algorithms. Start learning linear algebra (matrices) and that will get you into some initial crypto algorithms (not secure, but still technically cryptography).
I use MS products every day. All of my computers run Windows. I have programmed in .Net for a previous job. I hardly have anything personal against MS/Windows. .Net has quirks that can force beginning programmers to become complacent in what they expect programming languages to do. So yes, it...
.Net is hardly a better language/platform. It's a better platform if you're looking to integrate applications into an existing Windows environment, sure, but it has its own limitations. Restricting yourself to a single development environment is not the way to go for looking good to potential...