Privacy Guides
In the digital age, protecting your personal information might seem like an impossible task. We’re here to help.
This is a community for sharing news about privacy, posting information about cool privacy tools and services, and getting advice about your privacy journey.
You can subscribe to this community from any Kbin or Lemmy instance:
Check out our website at privacyguides.org before asking your questions here. We've tried answering the common questions and recommendations there!
Want to get involved? The website is open-source on GitHub, and your help would be appreciated!
This community is the "official" Privacy Guides community on Lemmy, which can be verified here. Other "Privacy Guides" communities on other Lemmy servers are not moderated by this team or associated with the website.
Moderation Rules:
- We prefer posting about open-source software whenever possible.
- This is not the place for self-promotion if you are not listed on privacyguides.org. If you want to be listed, make a suggestion on our forum first.
- No soliciting engagement: Don't ask for upvotes, follows, etc.
- Surveys, Fundraising, and Petitions must be pre-approved by the mod team.
- Be civil, no violence, hate speech. Assume people here are posting in good faith.
- Don't repost topics which have already been covered here.
- News posts must be related to privacy and security, and your post title must match the article headline exactly. Do not editorialize titles, you can post your opinions in the post body or a comment.
- Memes/images/video posts that could be summarized as text explanations should not be posted. Infographics and conference talks from reputable sources are acceptable.
- No help vampires: This is not a tech support subreddit, don't abuse our community's willingness to help. Questions related to privacy, security or privacy/security related software and their configurations are acceptable.
- No misinformation: Extraordinary claims must be matched with evidence.
- Do not post about VPNs or cryptocurrencies which are not listed on privacyguides.org. See Rule 2 for info on adding new recommendations to the website.
- General guides or software lists are not permitted. Original sources and research about specific topics are allowed as long as they are high quality and factual. We are not providing a platform for poorly-vetted, out-of-date or conflicting recommendations.
Additional Resources:
- EFF: Surveillance Self-Defense
- Consumer Reports Security Planner
- Jonah Aragon (YouTube)
- r/Privacy
- Big Ass Data Broker Opt-Out List
view the rest of the comments
So, like with a lot of things it depends on your risk tolerance. If you have Android and don't take steps to keep Google from your location, the only extra thing your giving Google with Fitbit is your heart rate, activity level, weight, and menstrual cycle (if applicable). They'll (probably) sell this information in bulk to advertisers so they can link your advertisement ID to ads relevant to you, like ads for stationary bikes or whatever.
When faced with this problem what I said to myself was, "I can't selfhost and build a fitness tracker. So some company is going to get my info. I'll break it up as much as I can." I use Garmin.
Garmin watches are a quality product. I'm fond of the ones with eink displays so I don't have to charge the but once a month. Garmin has my health info. Proton has my emails. Google has my calendar events (Google calendar has no reasonable replacement imo.)
I know you didn't ask for other product recommendations. But all of this is a long winded way of saying the danger is letting one company have all your information.
Companies and governments will always know something about you, unless you live on the the moon. The important thing is keeping track of who knows what and if one company begins to know an unreasonable amount (looking at you Google), then start cutting off that company.
Lastly, consider your political climate. If I'm a woman in Texas I'm likely not going to let any company know when my last period was.
Thank you for the well-reasoned response! I am definitely leaning toward Garmin or Withings because of their privacy policies.