It’s been possible for centuries
this post was submitted on 12 Oct 2023
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Privacy
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I barely use Google for anything now. My email is still with them for historic reasons but other than that I rarely use them. My default search is DuckDuckGo and beyond that I don’t even have to make a conscious effort.
Just as I’m writing this is I realise I also use Google Maps.
The only difficult part of moving your email from gmail is changing your email everywhere and telling everyone your new. Moving the messages themselves is easy. Many (for paid) services have a moving functionality.
I recently migrated to Protonmail, and the biggest issue I had was a good number of sites/apps wouldn't let me update my email address to my new protonmail address.
I lucked out on that front and could use — so much easier for professional stuff. For other stuff I use my domain to make it cool sounding :)
Privacy, from my point of view, means I have control over where my personal data goes and I am not being surveilled by governments or by ad companies. I generally use Techlore, Privacy Guides, and this community for reference and recommendations.
If not for Play Books, my YouTube channel and a few services still using Google SSO, I would be completely off Google.
Current Google Substitutions:
- Google Search --> Startpage
- Maps --> OpenStreetMap / Organic Maps
- YouTube --> Invidious / Yattee, and PeerTube
- Play Store --> F-Droid and Aurora Store
- News --> NetNewsWire (using Sky News, Gay Times, them., and a few comics and oddities)
- Gmail --> ProtonMail
- Meet --> Jitsi Meet
- Drive --> Filen
- Calendar --> Proton Calendar
- Translate --> TransLite
- Photos --> Filen
- Chrome --> LibreWolf / Orion
- Chat --> WhatsApp, Discord, and Instagram (I would prefer to use Matrix, but my increasingly distributed friends won't move)
- Google Workspace --> LibreOffice, GOffice, and ONLYOFFICE
- Blogger --> Neocities
- Keep --> Cryptee
- Forms --> FramaForms (I plan to start using Purplix once it's out of alpha)
I'm mostly de-googled.
- Email/calendar/contacts are in a paid service (fastmail currently)
- Search is either DDG or Startpage
- Youtube is watched via piped.video (only certain creators that aren't available elsewhere)
- Cloud storage is from Filen / Hetzner
- Maps via openstreetmap (even on my phone)
The only thing I've not been able to de-google is my android phone (using an account with no personal info on it). Would use a de-googled android but my banking apps refuse to work in one. Apple is crap.
Privacy is that you don't give out your personal info to everyone who asks for it.
- Don't have any social media presence (no facebook, twitter, instagram, tiktok etc).
- Use privacy friendly open source tools and open source software.
- Don't use any Big Tech services/software.
- Use paid services where you're the customer not the product
- Live in the EU (GDPR)