DeGoogle Yourself

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A community for those that would like to get away from Google.

Here you may post anything related to DeGoogling, why we should do it or good software alternatives!

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I am a victim of the network effect who wishes to degoogle. What do I do? (thelemmy.club)

submitted 7 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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This post is going to be a bit personal (and maybe a little bit out of context, it's not just Google software I want to remove) but I'm tired of not knowing what to do about it. I want and have wanted to get rid of a bunch of proprietary software in my life, including but not limited to Google's software, for quite a while now, and I even got a Pixel 7A with hopes of installing GrapheneOS. But there are a few problems. First, my parents are understandably concerned and need me to use Google Maps' location sharing whenever I go to school. All my classmates use Instagram and we have that as our only messaging platform. I currently use DFInstagram, but I feel that it is not free from spyware. Finally, I also own a DJI Mini 3 Pro, and the associated DJI Fly app just refuses to work under GrapheneOS (I tested). Is there anything I can do to replace or limit the access of these aforementioned proprietary apps?

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[–] [email protected] 10 points 7 months ago (9 children)

You can offer your friends the option to use Signal for messaging. It's not a big deal to use several apps for messaging different people.

I don't know how old you are or were you live, but it just sounds crazy to me your parents want to know your location at all time, it seems paranoid. Maybe there are other "location sharing" apps out there, but they are by definition not very privacy oriented, not sure if I would trust another app more than Google-Maps...

[–] [email protected] 9 points 7 months ago

OwnTracks is good for location sharing/logging and is open source. Ideally requires you to run your own MQTT server though.

If not using your own server, you can use payload encryption to protect your location data from being snooped by other users. (But ideally you should just run your own server, it's pretty easy.)

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