Hello!
I was somewhat active on the previous translation forum and may have an answer for this. The issue with stars appearing instead of characters has something to do with the character library. Since the library is Japanese characters it is all stored as picture files and while those...
It's not the movies or games downloads that I would worry about, like breaking into networks, downloading encrypted things, spying on network traffic. I have seen so many "Top Secret" seals on files when I was a kid
I was obsessed with finding UFOs, a surprising amount of US files where stashed on computers in other countries, China back in the early 90s omg sooo much